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PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 



ADDRESSES AND LETTERS 



BY 
MERCER GREEN JOHNSTON 

M 

Author of "Plain American Talks in the Philippines.'* 




BOSTON 

SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY 

1917 



AC.8 



CoPYBIGHT, 1917 

Shermak, French &* Company 



NOV 30 1917 
©CU481228 



TO 
MY WIFE 

KATHERINE AUBREY 

A PERFECT COMRADE IN 
QUIET HOURS AND STORMY 



A NATIONAL CONFESSION 

The Power behind the Wind, 
The Power beneath the Wave: 

We need them both 

In very truth 
Our Nation dear to save. 

The Power behind the Sun, 
The Power beneath the Sod: 

We need them both 

I take my oath 
Our task to do for God. 

The Power behind the Brawn, 
The Power within the Brain: 

We need them both — 

All work, no sloth ! 
To do our duty plain. 

The Power above the Sky, 
The Power beneath the Soul: 

We need them both, 

O God of Truth, 
To cross our cross-marked goal. 

O Power that wrought in Christ, 
O Light that lit the grave — 
Lord God Most High — 
Lord God Most Nigh — 
We need thee, Lord, 
Speak Thou the Word, 
Our Nation's soul to save! 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I Patriotism and Radicalism .... 3 
II Washington the Statesman ... 31 

III Washington, First in the Hearts of 

His Countrymen 37 

IV Paxomaniacs: or Pacifists Run Mad . 47 
V First Impressions of Nietzsche . . 77 

VI The University and the Universe . .123 

VII Letters to Radicals 143 

VIII The American Spirit 173 

IX Crucified Belgium 197 



I 

PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

A speech delivered in the Academy of Music, 
Baltimore, before the Open Forum, Sunday, April 
1st, 1917, on the day before President Wilson de- 
livered his War Message. 



PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

My American Fellow-Citizens: 

This is a supreme moment of history, universal, 
national, personal. It would hardly be possible 
to exaggerate its solemnity. For you and for 
me, and for our Nation, it is the moment of 
moments. 

There is a time, we know not when, 
A place, we know not where, 

That marks the destiny of men, 
For glory or despair. 

This is such a time and such a place. " Multi- 
tudes, multitudes in the valley of decision: for the 
day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision." 
So the Voice that speaks to the souls of men and 
nations is crying, crying, crying, in trumpet tones. 
The ears that are deaf to that thrilling insistent 
cry are indeed dull of hearing. The heart that is 
not stirred by it, and lifted up by it out of its 
littleness and sordid meanness and bodily fear into 
an atmosphere of greatness, nobility, and valor, 
in which it breathes freely and joyously, is a dead 
heart (it seems to me), or else a heart that has 
undergone some sad change that makes it a 
stranger to the " hopes that make us men." In 

3 



4 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

my own heart this Voice sets the wild echoes 
flying; silences that which is of the earth earthy; 
summons me to self-sacrifice; makes my assurance 
doubly sure 

" That men may rise on stepping-stones 
Of their dead selves to higher things." 

Ah, it makes the immortal spirit within me stand 
on tiptoe and salute as its fellow across the Ra- 
vine of Death our young American poet, Alan 
Seeger, who wrote to his mother from that red field 
of honor in Europe in which all of him that could 
die now rests : " Death is nothing terrible after 
all. It may mean something even more wonderful 
than life. It cannot mean anything worse to the 
good soldier. 

" I have a rendezvous to keep with Death 
On some scarred slope of battle hill . . . 
And I to my pledged word am true, 
I shall not fail that rendezvous." 

This is indeed a supreme moment in the life of 
every American. The hour of our Nation has 
come. Even now the clock is striking the hour. 
It is the knell that summons our Country to heaven 
or to hell. Our individual responsibility for help- 
ing America make the answer that alone can save 
her soul is so great that we must, at peril of our 
own souls* shake ourselves free from every hin- 
drance and do our uttermost with heart and mind 
and spirit and body to enable her to make the 



PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 5 

answer for which the God of Nations is waiting, — 
the answer for which the God of Nations has been 
kept waiting overlong. 

The afternoon of the day I was asked to make 
this address, I climbed for the first time the two 
hundred and forty steps of the noble monument 
that now for nearly a century has given distinc- 
tion to this historic city, and stood at the feet of 
the heroic figure of Washington. From that 
commanding height I saw, as it were, not only all 
Baltimore, but " all the kingdoms of the world, 
and the glory of them." If Satan was there to 
tempt me with worldly ambition for myself or my 
Country, he found nothing in me, and kept dis- 
creetly in the background. But I had a strong 
feeling that the spirit of Washington was there, 
and I stood beneath the outstretched hand of the 
marble statue of the Father of our Country, try- 
ing to contemplate the life of the whole world from 
the highest and most selfless point of view. I 
prayed to the God of our Fathers to help me speak 
upon this occasion in a manner worthy of the 
presence of this great servant of His who has 
found greater favor in the eyes of mankind than 
any mortal that ever governed a great state. 

So, as I speak to-day, forgive me if I am some- 
what more conscious of the presence of the spirit 
of Washington than of your presence. It pleases 
and helps me to think that he honors us with his 
presence this afternoon. That he is the unseen 
guest of honor upon this stage. And that he 



6 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

comes attended by those valiant companions in 
arms and statecraft who helped him to bring 
down America out of heaven on to earth — and 
America that God had prepared as a bride adorned 
for her husband and held aloft until He found 
men with vision and virtue and valor enough to be 
entrusted with her. 

If the stage is not too crowded I should like 
to admit another great spirit whose fame has gone 
out into all the world. The earthly tenement of 
this great soul was made, — so Lowell tells us, 
who calls him " our Martyr-Chief " and even 
" The first American," — out of " the sweet clay 
from the breast of the unexhausted West." That 
earthly tenement, fifty-two years ago, in troublous 
times like these, in a building like this, in a sister 
city, was shattered by the foul deed of a fanatic. 
Even so, such was his largeness of heart, I make 
no doubt the spirit of the Savior of this Nation is 
as ready as the spirit of the Founder of this Na- 
tion, to grace with his presence every occasion 
where Americans take thought for America. I 
have a feeling that great Lincoln's spirit comes 
down from one of the boxes on the left to take his 
place among his peers on the stage. 

I trust that the presence of this goodly com- 
pany of American patriots with which my warm 
imagination has filled this stage will be an embar- 
rassment to no person in this theatre. Certainly 
the presence of those who have made and pre- 
served us a nation will be a cause of no embarrass- 



PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 7 

ment to any one who has a God's right to call 
himself an American citizen. If apologies or ex- 
planations are in order, they will have to come 
from the house. None will be forthcoming from 
the stage. But I hope there is absolutely no 
need of apologies or explanations. I hope there 
is good ground for believing that if some such 
resolution as this were proposed — " Resolved, we 
join no party, we countenance no cause, that does 
not honor the American flag, in public and in pri- 
vate, above all other flags, and keep step to the 
music of the Union " — the resolution would be 
carried by an overwhelming majority, if not with 
entire unanimity. — Even among the Twelve Apos- 
tles and Washington's Generals unanimity was not 
always attainable. 

A moment ago I was speaking of the splendid 
column that stands in this city as a memorial of 
Washington. As I speak I can see in my mind's 
eye that yet loftier marble shaft that stands on 
the bank of the Potomac in his honor. Once I 
walked down it all the way reading the testimonies 
to his greatness and nobility graven in marble that 
have come from almost all lands under the sun. 
If you are ever tempted to discount the character 
or the achievements of Washington, before you 
reach a final conclusion, you ought to walk up or 
down that monument and read the evidence in the 
case of Washington against the World. It is 
piled up there in imperishable marble five hundred 
feet high. The sight of it makes one slow to join 



8 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

issue with Webster when he says : " America has 
furnished to the world the character of Washing- 
ton! And if our American institutions had done 
nothing else, that alone would have entitled them 
to the respect of mankind." It is true of Wash- 
ington in a greater degree than of any other 
statesman who has fought the battles of human 
liberty that " the world is gone after him." 
Wherever on this earth the cause of human liberty 
is intelligently loved, there the name of Washing- 
ton is sincerely revered. 

There is yet another patriotic American land- 
mark that rises before me in imagination as I 
speak. That is the Bunker Hill Monument, a 
mighty mile-post on the road of liberty and jus- 
tice, of world-wide and everlasting significance. 
Deserving as it is of a niche in the memory of 
every liberty-loving soul by reason of the heroic 
struggle it commemorates, it is still more memor- 
able by reason of the great orations delivered by 
Daniel Webster at the laying of its corner-stone 
in 1825 and upon the completion of the monument 
in 1843. I have already made a brief quotation 
from the latter of these. I could wish that you 
took your American citizenship with sufficient seri- 
ousness to read them both through from beginning 
to end at this time. Let me hope that you will 
do so. But I want you to hear further from the 
second of these great republican documents this 
afternoon. 

" And even if civilization should be subverted," 



PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 9 

declares Webster, " and the truths of the Christian 
religion obscured by a new deluge of barbarism, 
the memory of Bunker Hill and the American Rev- 
olution will still be elements and parts of the 
knowledge which shall be possessed by the last 
man to whom the light of civilization and Chris- 
tianity shall be extended." 

Again — and here he speaks to the very times 
in which we are living : " Woe betide the man who 
brings to this day's worship feeling less than 
wholly American! Woe betide the man who 
stands here with the fires of local resentments 
burning, or the purpose of fomenting local jeal- 
ousies and the strifes of local interests festering 
and rankling in his heart! Union, established in 
justice, in patriotism, and the most plain and ob- 
vious common interest, — union, founded on the 
same love of liberty, cemented by blood shed in 
the same common cause, — union has been the 
source of all our glory and greatness thus far, 
and is the ground of all our highest hopes. This 
column stands on Union. I know not that it 
might not keep its position, if the American Union, 
in the mad conflict of human passions, and in the 
strife of parties and factions should be broken up 
and destroyed. I know not that it would totter 
and fall to the earth, and mingle its fragments 
with the fragments of Liberty and the Constitu- 
tion, when State should be separated from State, 
and function and dismemberment obliterate forever 
all the hopes of the founders of our republic, and 



10 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

the great inheritance of their children. It might 
stand. But who, from beneath the weight of mor- 
tification and shame that would oppress him, could 
look up to behold it? Whose eyeballs would not 
be seared by such a spectacle? For my part, 
should I live to such a time, I shall avert my eyes 
from it forever." 

Again : " If there was nothing of value in the 
principles of the American Revolution, then there 
is nothing valuable in the battle of Bunker Hill 
and its consequences. But if the Revolution was 
an era in the history of man favorable to human 
happiness, if it was an event which marked the 
progress of man all over the world from despotism 
to liberty, then this monument is not raised with- 
out cause. Then the battle of Bunker Hill is not 
an event undeserving celebrations, commemora- 
tions, and rejoicings, now and in all coming 
times." 

Finally, Webster speaks of " our agony of 
glory, the war of Independence," and brings his 
oration to a close with this passage that ought to 
find cordial welcome in every American heart: 
" We have indulged in gratifying recollections of 
the past, in the prosperity and pleasures of the 
present, and in high hopes for the future. But 
let us remember that we have duties and obliga- 
tions to perform, corresponding to the blessings 
which we enjoy. Let us remember the trust, the 
sacred trust, attaching to the rich inheritance 
which we have received from our fathers. Let us 



PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 11 

feel our personal responsibility, to the full extent 
of our power and influence, for the preservation 
of the principles of civil and religious liberty. 
And let us remember that it is only religion, and 
morals, and knowledge, that can make men respect- 
able and happy, under any form of government. 
Let us hold fast the great truth, that communities 
are responsible, as well as individuals ; that no gov- 
ernment is respectable which is not just; that 
without unspotted purity of public faith, without 
sacred public principle, fidelity, and honor, no 
mere forms of government, no machinery of laws, 
can give dignity to political society. In our day 
and generation let us seek to raise and improve the 
moral sentiment, so that we may look, not for a 
degraded, but for an elevated and improved fu- 
ture. And when both we and our children shall 
have been consigned to the house appointed for all 
living, may love of country and pride of country 
glow with equal fervor among those to whom our 
names and our blood shall have descended! And 
then, when honored and decrepit age shall lean 
against the base of this monument, and troops of 
ingenuous youth shall be gathered round it, and 
when the one shall speak to the other of its objects, 
the purposes of its construction, and the great and 
glorious events with which it is connected, there 
shall rise from every youthful breast the ejacula- 
tion, " Thank God, I — I also — am an Amer- 
ican ! " 

I trust there is no one within sound of my voice 



12 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

who calls himself an American citizen, and avails 
himself of the privileges of an American citizen, 
who cannot, in such an hour as this, make that 
ejaculation with some degree of fervor. Born as 
I was in the state of Mississippi at the beginning 
of the Reconstruction Period that followed the 
close of the Civil War, on a plantation that suf- 
fered from both armies during that war, and in 
a family that was reduced from affluence to 
penury by it, there was a time in my life when the 
degree of fervor with which I acknowledged my 
birth-right as an American was not very great. I 
remember well when the flag of the Southern Con- 
federacy under which my father fought for four 
years was dearer to me than the Stars and Stripes, 
and when I felt called upon as a good Southerner 
to tackle any boy of my size or thereabouts who 
admitted he was a Yankee; but I thank God with 
all my heart that, all unconsciously, my Ameri- 
canism grew with my growth, and did so under 
southern skies, and that by the time I reached my 
majority, and was accorded the privilege of cast- 
ing an American ballot, I was altogether an Amer- 
ican, and able and ready to say with the greatest 
degree of fervor, and out of a heart void of offense 
towards God, towards humanity, towards my own 
or any other nation, " Thank God, I — I also — 

AM AN AMERICAN ! " 

Now when I call myself an American, I mean an 
American who could not only pass muster in the 
presence of Washington and Lincoln, but who 



PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 13 

would feel no sort of embarrassment if they were 
to turn the X-Ray on his mind and heart. 

And when I speak of Washington and Lincoln 
I mean the whole Washington and the whole Lin- 
coln. 

I mean the Washington who was " first in war " 
as well as " first in peace, and first in the hearts 
of his countrymen." I mean the Washington who, 
while he wisely kept the country out of war while 
it was recovering from the stress and strain of 
the Revolution, and finding itself, wrote these 
words in his Farewell Address : " If we remain 
one People, under an efficient government, the pe- 
riod is not far off when we may defy material in- 
jury from external annoyance; when we may take 
such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we 
may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously 
respected ; when belligerent nations, under the im- 
possibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not 
lightly hazard the giving us provocation when we 
may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided 
by our justice, may counsel." 

I mean the Lincoln of war as well as the Lin- 
coln of peace. I mean the Lincoln who was ready 

" To front a lie in arms and not to yield." 

I mean the Lincoln who on the battlefield of Gettys- 
burg in 1863 concluded his oration with these 
words : " It is rather for us to be here dedicated 
to the great task remaining before us, that from 
these honored dead we take increased devotion to 



14 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

that cause for which they gave the last full meas- 
ure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that 
these dead shall not have died in vain; that this 
nation, under God, shall have a new birth of free- 
dom, and that the government of the people, by 
the people, and for the people, shall not perish 
from the earth." I mean the Lincoln who turned 
a deaf ear to the foolish, sentimental plea for a 
" peace without victory," and in his Second In- 
augural address in 1865, after expressing surprise 
that " any men should dare to ask a just God's 
assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat 
of other men's faces," uttered these solemn words : 
" Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that 
this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass 
away. Yet if God wills that it continue until all 
the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred 
and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, 
and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash 
shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, 
as was said three thousand years ago, so still it 
must be said, that the judgments of the Lord are 
true and righteous altogether." 

Having said this, it is hardly necessary for me 
to attempt to characterize the peace-at-any-price 
propaganda that is being carried on in our Coun- 
try to-day with such rampageous zeal. And yet, 
perhaps, it would be uncandid in me to let this 
occasion pass without making it perfectly clear 
where I stand in this matter. I stand four-square 



PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 15 

against it, morning, noon and night. I stand four- 
square against this pacifist brain-storm of 1917 as 
I stood four-square against the somewhat similar 
pacifist brain-storm of 1898, with this difference, 
that my convictions are now nineteen times 
stronger than they were nineteen years ago. And 
I have by no means kept my convictions laid up 
in a napkin during these years. I have carried 
them with me openly around the world, and into 
all my social, political, ethical and religious studies 
and activities. I believe now as I believed then 
that this propaganda (from which all advocates 
of reasonable and righteous peace now hold aloof) 
is a symptom of disease and not of health, of de- 
cadence and not of progress, of darkness and not 
of light, of death and not of life. I believe now as 
I believed then that the outstanding figures in this 
propaganda are blind leaders of the blind, scorch- 
ing for the ditch. I believe now as I believed then 
that such an outburst as this is a cause not only 
for national but human humiliation. I have read 
an enormous mass of the literature pertaining to 
this subject, and the more of it I read the more 
strongly am I convinced that the spokesmen and 
spokes-women of the propaganda (whatever they 
call themselves, Socialists, Pacifists, or what not) 
are vying with one another in " foaming out their 
own shame." With Ferdinand Brunitiere, editor 
of the Revue des deux Mcmdes, I profoundly be- 
lieve that " Pacifism is essentially and funda- 
mentally a coward's creed. Cowardice is based on 



16 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

the profound conviction that death is the greatest 
of evils because life is the greatest of goods. But 
for the honor of humanity it must be said that 
neither sentiment is (generally believed to be) true. 
No, indeed ; life is not the greatest of goods, for it 
is the fundamental principle of morality that many 
things ought to be preferred to life; and death 
is by no means the greatest of evils, since our true 
manhood is undoubtedly to be measured by the 
height to which we rise above the fear of it." 

Yes, Pacifism is essentially and fundamentally 
a coward's creed ! The taint of fear is in it ! The 
very taste of it makes my heart sick ! 

I will not go so far as to say that every pro- 
fessor of this coward's creed is a coward. There 
may be exceptions — so strange are the workings 
of the human mind. But at the best the plea of 
the pacifist is a cowardly plea. It feels after 
and finds and gives countenance to the coward. 
The man who makes it may not himself be a per- 
sonal coward, but he stoops to conquer the coward 
and enroll him under his banner by an appeal to 
his cowardice — by the abuse of valor and the 
praise of poltroonery. Brave pacifists there may 
be, but if seeing is believing, cowards take to the 
rose-water of pacifism at the sound of the trumpet 
as ducks take to water. 

It is my deliberate judgment that the peace-at- 
any-price propaganda that has swept through 
our Country like an epidemic of German measles 
since the Kaiser constituted himself vicegerent of 



PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 17 

Frightfulness is contrary to patriotism as it has 
been understood in America from the days of 
Washington to the days of Lincoln, and as it is 
understood now by the normal American heart. 

Doubtless there are those to whom I speak (for 
this hall has echoed with pacifist pleas of late) 
who will not only admit the difference to which 
I call attention, but who make a boast of it, and 
who have little room in their hearts for the old- 
fashioned kind of patriotism — the kind of pa- 
triotism that made and that has preserved us a 
Nation. 

Possibly there are those present who have scant 
regard, much less love, for the great names of 
American history; who would not willingly give a 
place of honor on this stage even to General Wash- 
ington, unless they could first take from him his 
sword and swear him to blind loyalty to their par- 
ticular propaganda. I am tempted to say their 
pet, petty propaganda. 

Possibly — would to God I overshoot the mark ! 
— possibly, there are those here who have little 
respect, less honor, and no love for the American 
Flag; who are irritated rather than inspired by 
the display of the Stars and Stripes ; whose social 
and political hopes fly freer under some other sym- 
bol to which they have given or are tempted to 
give their highest allegiance; who have surren- 
dered to the fear that our national emblem does 
not to-day (however it may have been in the years 
gone by) stand for human freedom, but rather for 



18 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

industrial bondage, and who, because they have 
made this surrender, are ready to surrender, if 
they have not already surrendered, the Flag to a 
small but financially powerful group of our fellow- 
citizens whose chief place of business is Wall 
Street; who, in a word, regard the Stars and 
Stripes, not as the flag of democracy, but of plu- 
tocracy, — not as the flag of the people of the 
United States of America but of Wall Street. 

Granted that the thoughts of some of those 
of you who sit before me have been or are running 
in some such channels as I have intimated, what 
shall I say to you, my fellow-citizens, now that 
our Country is on the very verge of war with 
Germany ? 

I hope you know me well enough to make it un- 
necessary for me to protest that whatever I say 
I shall say out of the abundance of a heart that 
beats in profoundest sympathy with those whose 
watchword to-day is Social Justice. 

That I am no blind defender of our present so- 
cial and industrial system many of you know full 
well. Here in Baltimore, as yonder in Newark, 
and elsewhere, I have, without regard to conse- 
quences, expressed my conviction, in the most un- 
compromising language I could command, that 
this system is unjust, and must be radically re- 
formed or revolutionized. 

There is no one into whose face I look who hates 
social injustice more than I do. I mean the kind 



PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 19 

of social injustice that flourishes like weeds on 
American soil, and nowhere more luxuriantly than 
under the very shadow of the Statue of Liberty. 

There is no one into whose face I look who, when 
silence was golden, has more fearlessly denounced 
the iniquities and injustices of our mammonized 
society ; and no one, perhaps, who has had to pay 
a greater price for the privilege of free speech 
along these tabooed lines. 

It ought not to be necessary for me to declare 
to you that I am the sworn enemy of Mammon, 
and the uncompromising opponent of every man, 
every group of men, and every social institution 
and every social system, that does him honor or 
serves him through fear. This is no secret, for I 
have publicly slapped his face and challenged him 
to mortal combat. Between Mammonism and my- 
self there is war to the knife, the knife to the hilt, 
the hilt to the hand. What I call Mammonism 
is sometimes called Capitalism. That is what it 
is generally called by Socialists. Well, so far as 
Mammonism and Capitalism are one and the same 
thing — and if they are not inherently one and 
the same thing they are in danger of becoming one 
and the same thing, and even now are devilishly 
alike — what I have said of Mammon and Mam- 
monism holds true of Capitalism. I am for Man- 
hood, not Things. I am against whatever is 
against men. If Money magnifies itself and mini- 
mizes Manhood, I am against Money, lock, stock 



20 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

and barrel. I am for Humanity as against Prop- 
erty, morning, noon and night, breakfastless, din- 
nerless and supperless if need be. 

I am a pretty radical sort of a democrat. I 
believe not only in ecclesiastical and political but 
also in industrial democracy, and if there are any 
further developments of democracy while I am on 
earth I fully expect to believe in them. My de- 
mocracy runs the whole gamut. My democracy 
is bound for the ultimate goal of democracy, and 
is prepared for a head-end collision if it is neces- 
sary to reach its goal. I am not afraid of the 
term revolutionist in connection with my democ- 
racy. I hold in high honor the American rev- 
olutionists of 1775, and I am very far from think- 
ing that revolution worked its perfect work on 
American soil during what we call the Revolution- 
ary War. I am very far from thinking that after 
1783 there was no further need for the wheels of 
social progress to turn, to revolve, to make rev- 
olutions, beneath the flag under which political 
freedom was won. On the contrary, I believe 
there is absolutely essential social progress to be 
made here in America which will be made only 
through revolution. The revolution may be sud- 
den, or it may be gradual, but it will be none the 
less revolution. Not only must individual Amer- 
icans be born again, and then again and again, if 
they are to achieve their intellectual and spiritual 
possibilities. This Nation must be born again, 
and then again and again, if it is to achieve its 



PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 21 

democratic possibilities. And Re-Birth means 
Revolution. 

I trust that if there has been any disposition on 
the part of any of you to distrust my social vision 
or my social sympathies the cause of that distrust 
has now been largely removed. Certainly it is 
not as a conservative or a representative of con- 
servatism, and just as certainly it is not as a capi- 
talist or a representative of Capitalism, that I 
make my plea for old-fashioned patriotism to this 
audience in which radical social sentiment is so 
dominant. 

I know that many of you to whom I speak are 
Socialists, and that a good many of you Socialists 
are members of the Socialist Party. I recall that 
the last time I spoke from this platform to such a 
meeting as this I said in answer to a question in- 
tended to get the answer it got that I thought 
Americans who believed in Socialism ought to 
join the Socialist Party, and that I myself ex- 
pected to join it. But I have not joined the So- 
cialist Party. And I am making no move to join 
the Socialist Party. And I would not advise any 
American to join the Socialist Party. I have un- 
dergone a change of heart towards the Socialist 
Party. And I will tell you why. Some of you 
may not like the reason, but times like these call 
for plain and fearless speech. I do not think so 
well of the Socialist Party as I did several months 
ago for the reason that I know a great deal more 
about the dominant element in the Socialist Party 



22 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

now than I did then, and the more I learn about 
the dominant element of this party the more de- 
termined am I, in the year 1917 when Germany is 
threatening the well-being of human life on this 
earth, not only not to be dominated by, but not to 
have any party comradeship with, the eighty thou- 
sand Americans who constitute the Socialist Party. 
The more I looked into the utterances and the 
activities of the Socialist Party since the begin- 
ning of the great war in 1914, the clearer it be- 
came to me that the Socialist Party in America is 
dominated by men who are not American, but 
Pro-German, in sentiment. Many of these men 
are not only unAmerican, they are actually anti- 
American. They are both alien-minded and alien- 
hearted. Many of them despise and are at enmity 
with American ideals that I have long cherished, 
and been inspired by, and for which I am ready to 
lay down my life. Whatever it may have been in 
the past, whatever it may be in the future, at this 
critical juncture of human affairs the Socialist 
Party of America must be reckoned among the 
foes, not among the defenders, of the Rights of 
Man. The Socialist Party of America is busily 
giving aid and comfort to the conscienceless ene- 
mies of mankind. The Socialist Party of Amer- 
ica is conducting itself as though it were a toy or 
a tool of Hohenzollernism ; as though it were 
branded on the bottom, " Made in Germany." 
The Socialist Party of America is not only out of 
touch with things American, it is out of touch with 



PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 23 

things truly and wholesomely democratic. If it 
is not a traitor to, it is purblind to, the larger 
democratic hopes of humanity. Therefore the So- 
cialist Party of America is no fit place for a real 
American to be in the year 1917. Indeed, it is 
not a fit place for any man to be in whose heart 
God has set the great hope of a world-wide Broth- 
erhood divinely democratic. 

Some of you to whom what I have just said is 
least palatable know that I am not alone in mak- 
ing this discovery with regard to the Pro-German- 
ism of the Socialist Party. You know that the 
discovery has been made by some of the most 
prominent Socialists in America, and you know 
that every day men of national reputation who 
have for years been identified with the Socialist 
Party are leaving it, and leaving it because they 
distrust both the Americanism and the Socialism 
of the dominant element of the party. 

I dare say what I have said — offensive though 
it may seem to some of you to be — because I can- 
not but believe that deep down in the heart of 
every man born under the American flag, and every 
man who of his own free will has come to dwell 
under that flag, there is a real love for the demo- 
cratic and fraternal ideals for which that flag 
has stood, for which that flag stands, and for 
which that flag, without being dishonored, may yet 
stand. 

The American Flag stands, or may without 
being dishonored be made to stand, for the whole 



24 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

of human justice, the whole of human fraternity, 
the whole of human equality of opportunity. 
That Flag was born to be borne onward and up- 
ward by the vanguard of Human Freedom. Be- 
neath it " whatsoever things are true, whatsoever 
things are honest, whatsoever things are just, 
whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things 
are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report " 
find their natural abiding place. It is the friend- 
liest flag that floats. It was first raised by the 
friends of humanity. It has never been surren- 
dered to the foes of mankind, whether individual, 
or corporate, or class. It is base disloyalty not 
only to that flag but to the brave brotherly hopes 
of which it is symbolic even to entertain the 
thought of surrendering it. No man with a real 
freeman's soul could see in it the emblem of slavery. 
It is a shameless, self-dishonoring slander to speak 
of the flag raised by Washington and kept aloft 
by Lincoln as the flag of Wall Street. 

Of the social and industrial crimes committed 
beneath the Stars and Stripes I do not need to 
be told. I know the whole hateful story of preda- 
tory wealth in the " land of the free and the 
home of the brave," by chapter and verse. I 
know that some of the chapters are as cruel as 
hell. I know there are pages of this story of 
American business that are as inhuman as though 
they were ripped from the blood-stained diary of 
some Paris Apache. American greed for gold has 
kept my patriotism on the cross for a score of con- 



PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 25 

scious years. I know the burning shame of it ! 
My loyal heart is intimately acquainted with the 
agony of it ! 

But I know that the American Flag is not re- 
sponsible for the brazen sins against social justice 
and fraternity committed on American soil by 
privileged Americans against unprivileged Amer- 
icans. The Stars and Stripes did not inspire 
those sins. The Stars and Stripes do not eclipse 
or blot out those sins. The Stars and Stripes 
do not justify those sins. No American citizen, 
not the most sordid, dare plead his loyalty to the 
Stars and Stripes for the social or industrial un- 
doing of another American. 

If the American business savage finds sanctuary 
in the shadow of the Stars and Stripes, the fault 
is not the Flag's. The fault lies with the sons 
of freedom who have fallen asleep or sold them- 
selves for a song beneath that Flag. The fault 
lies with those who have forgotten or never learned 
the meaning of the Flag, and who therefore held 
it cheaply, and who, because they held it cheaply 
were too ready to surrender it to the foes of 
those that Flag was born to befriend. 

Believe me, my fellow-radicals, it is the great- 
est kind of folly to flout the Flag for the social 
ills of which you justly and indignantly complain. 
Line upon line, star after star, that Flag gives 
the lie to those who would use it for purposes of 
oppression. When I see those gathered beneath 
it who for gain are ready to take their brethren by 



26 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

the throat, its red stripes seem to me to be tongues 
of fire threatening their destruction. There is no 
redder red, there is no more significant red for 
the liberty-loving man in any flag on this earth, 
than the ready-to-die-for-freedom red of the Amer- 
ican Flag. 

There is no propaganda looking towards larger 
justice and nobler fraternity that cannot be car- 
ried on beneath the American Flag, and carried 
on in utter loyalty to it. Every honorable politi- 
cal, social, or industrial propaganda ought to find 
in that Flag a mighty inspiration. That Flag is 
the handiwork of radicals, of revolutionists, and 
I care not how radical, how revolutionary, you 
may be, if your aims and your methods are hon- 
orable, if you mean to reach your goal under the 
American Constitution as it exists, or as you can 
get it constitutionally amended to read, you will 
not find a friendlier symbol under the sun than 
that Flag. 

To me, my friends, this Flag is unspeakably 
dear. Next to the Cross, it is my highest, holiest 
symbol. I love it passionately. I could not pos- 
sibly stand by and see dishonor done to it. I 
would account it a sweet and gracious honor to 
die for it. I beg you — those of you who have 
been most aggravated by the iniquities and injus- 
tices of which this Flag has been an involuntary 
witness — I beg you, not to be tempted into any 
kind of disloyalty to this Flag. Not ever, but 
most especially not now. Not now, my friends, 



PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 27 

not now ! For America's sake, for your own sake, 
for Democracy's sake, for the world's sake, I beg 
you not to be disloyal, in thought or word or deed, 
to the Stars and Stripes at this crucial moment of 
human history. For God's sake, men, Americans, 
rise up to the height of loyalty to America now ! 
Do I need to say that America expects, yes, 
demands this of you? She does. You are her 
sons by birth or adoption, and she demands of 
you, as she has a God's right to do, the service 
and sacrifice of sons. America is even now ris- 
ing up to her full splendid height and speaking 
her Almighty Must. Let us hear and heed her 
voice. If we refuse to do so, I care not under 
what pretext, we shall seal our own doom, and the 
doom of every cause to which we give our al- 
legiance. We shall, like the Loyalists of Revolu- 
tionary, and the Copperheads of Civil War days, 
but court and win dishonor, or worse. America 
is speaking to us, my fellowcitizens, and speaking 
insistently. America, now rising into heroic mood, 
— America now more than for years her Great 
Self, — is calling her sons to her side, and her 
voice is the voice of Democracy, is the voice of 
Humanity, is the voice of God. 



II 

WASHINGTON THE STATESMAN 



WASHINGTON THE STATESMAN 

Macaulaj, in his essay on Mill on Government, 
speaks of " the petty craft so often mistaken for 
statesmanship by minds grown narrow in habits 
of intrigue, jobbing and official etiquette." 

Between the noble statesmanship of Washing- 
ton and this sort of ignoble statecraft there is a 
great intellectual and ethical gulf fixed. Those 
on the right side of this gulf are statesmen: po- 
litical co-workers with God. Those on the wrong 
side of this gulf are the creeping things on the 
body politic, known today as " politicians." This 
fixed gulf between " politics " and statesmanship 
is not altogether impassable, but it needs a mighty 
mental and moral miracle of the kind that seldom 
happens to get a politician across it onto the right 
side. 

Washington was born on the right side of this 
political gulf. There he grew up, increasing in 
favor with God and man and there he wrought his 
great and splendid work. Never once did he cross 
over the gulf to the other side. He died as he 
lived, a clean-handed, free-minded, clear-souled 
servant of " the benign Parent of the human race," 
of whom he was ever humbly conscious, and of the 
country he carried in his bosom like a nursing 
father and so ardently loved. 

31 



32 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

A great statesman is a great political seer. 
And Washington was a great political seer. He 
had a great vision of the state. He was a states- 
man of " large discourse," as Shakespeare would 
say. He had the God-like capability of " look- 
ing before and after." His letters and his 
speeches leave no doubt of this. The " Farewell 
Address " is marked by the foresight and the 
insight of a great prophecy. He visualized, first, 
America, and then, American problems, afar off. 
He peered into the future and saw America when 
as yet America was not. And when America came 
to be, he knew both what was in her, and what was 
in store for her. 

But a great statesman is something more than a 
great political seer. He must be a great actor 
or doer, a great steerer or helmsman. He must 
go out into the uncharted sea of the future and 
bring the ship of state he sees in his vision safe 
into the port of the present where she can be 
seen and boarded by ordinary men. It is not 
enough for him to tell the story, or to paint the 
picture, of some imaginary ship of state. He 
must make the ship of his political fancy a solid 
political fact, an actual concrete thing in the 
world of politics — visible, tangible, workable. 
He must not be a mere talker, a word-mongerer, 
or statement-maker. He must be a doer, a builder, 
a state-maker. He must not only speak out, he 
must strike out, blow upon blow, to the end that 
the thing he visualizes may be actualized — to the 



WASHINGTON THE STATESMAN 33 

end that his dream may be dramatized and staged. 
If I may venture to use the figure of a rope-walker 
for a moment, the real statesman is not one who 
merely balances himself on a political rope swung 
near the ground. He must dare to walk the rope, 
from end to end, and that too when stretched at a 
dangerous height. A real statesman must be a 
man of undaunted courage. He must get some- 
where with his ideals. He must go forth valiantly 
with them. He must do and dare for them at all 
hazards, he should not be a " man on horse-back " ; 
rather should his feet be planted squarely on the 
solid earth. But he should have a horse at hand 
and be ready and able to mount him when great 
occasion calls for irrevocable action. 

Now Washington was not only a great political 
seer. He was a great political actor, a great doer 
of political deeds, a great steerer or helmsman of 
the ship of state. He was an extraordinarily 
great and intrepid servant of an extraordinarily 
noble political ideal. He is what the English 
historian has so finely called him, " the noblest 
figure that ever stood in the forefront of a na- 
tion's life." 



Ill 



WASHINGTON, FIRST IN THE HEARTS OF 
HIS COUNTRYMEN 

An address delivered at the dedication of tablet 
in Trinity Church, Newark, by the Sons of the 
American Revolution. 



WASHINGTON, FIRST IN THE HEARTS OF 
HIS COUNTRYMEN 

Sons of the American Revolution: 

I bid you welcome in the name of Old Trinity. 
It is altogether well that you should come together 
in this consecrated place for the patriotic pur- 
pose for which you are assembled. 

The place is perfect. In a peculiar sense it 
bears the imprimatur of him who beyond all others 
was the incarnation of the Spirit of J 76 — of him 
who was not only the brawn and the backbone, but 
the heart and brains and the good red blood of 
the American Revolution. He would be perfectly 
at home here. 

The purpose is a good purpose. Good for you, 
and good for those who come after you. And I 
thank you, both as a citizen of Newark and as 
rector of this church, for emphasizing, as you 
do by the fulfillment of your purpose, the his- 
toric interest of this old building which, like a 
precious heir-loom, adorns the throbbing bosom 
of this city as she slips off the short and simple 
dresses of townhood and steps upon the stage of 
civic womanhood and makes her challenging bow 

to the world. I count it a privilege to co-oper- 

37 



38 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

ate with you in the execution of your laudable 
purpose. 

" The place 

Where shining souls have passed imbibes a grace 

Beyond mere earth." 

So it was finely said by James Russell Lowell in 
the poem read at Cambridge under the Old Elm 
on the hundredth anniversary of Washington's 
taking command of the American Army. 

" Words pass as wind, but where great deeds were 

done 
A power abides transfused from sire to son: 
The boy feels deeper meanings thrill this ear, 
That tingling through his pulse life-long shall run, 
With sure impulsion to keep honor clear, 
When pointing down, his father whispers, ' Here, 
Here, where we stand, stood he, the purely great, 
Whose soul no siren passion could unsphere, 
Then nameless, now a power and mixed with fate." 

The imperishable tablet placed upon yonder 
tower is meant to tell Americans of today and 
tomorrow, especially the youth of our land, — 
and in so doing to preserve whatever of inspira- 
tion such knowledge may contain for the historic 
imagination, — that a " shining soul " whom we 
hold in high honor and, I trust, open wide our 
hearts to, once passed, foe beset, within stone's 
throw of this spot: and that, when he and the 
little band of men that went with him were the 
sole attentuated golden thread upon which all the 



WASHINGTON 39 

world's hopes of liberal government then hung. 

The inscription on this bronze tablet begins 
with this quotation from the First Book of 
Samuel : " There went with him a band of men 
whose hearts God had touched." Let me tell you 
why I so greatly desired to have this quotation 
in the inscription. 

First, because while there are striking contrasts 
between Saul, the young giant of Benjamin, the 
leader referred to in this passage, and Washing- 
ton, the young giant of Virginia, the leader we 
have in mind. Saul was so unbalanced a soul that 
even his great genius could not save him. Wash- 
ington possessed the " genius of balance " in a pre- 
eminent degree — being perhaps the most " even- 
balanced soul," as the American poet thought, and 
therefore, as the English historian declared, " the 
noblest figure that ever stood in the forefront 
of a nation's life." But while there are striking 
contrasts between Saul and Washington, there is 
a striking similarity in the romantic circumstances 
that occasioned the Twelve Tribes of Israel to 
turn to Saul as a savior from the Philistines, and 
the romantic circumstances that occasioned the 
Thirteen American Colonies to turn to Washing- 
ton as a savior from the British Philistines headed 
by George Third. 

There is another and stronger reason why this 
quotation appeals to me as peculiarly appro- 
priate to be associated forever with the name of 
him who was once proclaimed in all sincerity as 



40 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

" first in the hearts of his countrymen " as well 
as " first in war " and " first in peace." 

I regard it as one of my highest patriotic 
duties to do everything in my power to strengthen 
the hold of Washington upon the hearts of his 
countrymen. And I have thought that this quo- 
tation, which appeals at once to the heart, would 
contribute to this end. It seems to me to bring 
out the fact that a heart, a heart touched by God, 
is essential to great leadership. For men of heart 
do not follow heartless men. Men whose hearts 
God has touched do not follow men whose hearts 
have not been touched by God. When Saul was 
called to the kingship we are told " God gave him 
another heart." God gave him a heart with His 
own hands big enough, and human enough, and 
brave enough, to serve the needs of a king. There- 
fore it was that " there went with him a band of 
men whose hearts God had touched." That this 
was so in a far greater degree in the case of 
Washington I believe with all my heart. There- 
fore my heart opens wide to receive him. And 
nobody ever did, or ever could, impose a marble- 
hearted man upon me — I care not how fair he 
be. The man who finds a welcome to my heart 
of hearts must be a man with a heart of flesh, 
a heart that beats in strong sympathy with every 
noble cause, a heart that sends good red blood 
without stint leaping up to bathe the righteous 
thoughts of the brain. That Washington was 
such a man I am as sure as were Henry Lee and 



WASHINGTON 41 

John Marshall who knew him well, and knew that 
he ought to be, and said that he was, " first in the 
hearts of his countrymen." 

Of Washington's greatness there is no question. 
His title to greatness is guaranteed by the whole 
world. Lowell calls him " the sole chief without 
a blot," and all nations, peoples and languages 
say, Amen. In the judgment of the world it is 
as silly to speak contemptuously of the greatness 
of the sun as it is to speak disparagingly of the 
greatness of Washington. 

But how is it with Washington's claim upon the 
affections of his countrymen? It is not, I some- 
times fear, for his sake and ours, as well as it 
should be. There are some of the children of 
light, if we Americans are children of light, who 
are less wise in this matter than the children of 
the world: For I am inclined to think that the 
world has not only guaranteed Washington's title 
to greatness but has also taken him much to its 
heart. 

I could wish that every American would wel- 
come Washington to his heart of hearts. I know 
that it is rather a badge of shame than a certificate 
of superiority not to do so. It is the most nat- 
ural thing in the world for a normal American 
who knows Washington to give him a high place 
in his heart. Nobody would expect an abnormal 
person — a person with ethical smart-jacks (and 
there are a good many such afflicted folk among 
us) — to love anything normal, and Washington 



42 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

was in all respects a normal human being. But 
the failure of the normal American to give Wash- 
ington the high place in his affections that he 
richly deserves to hold is almost certain to be 
due to prejudice based upon ignorance — igno- 
rance of the flesh and blood man, who had bones 
in his hands, and brains in his head, and the red- 
dest of red blood in his heart and veins, who was 
at once a splendid lover and a splendid hater, 
who possessed great grit and gumption as well 
as great grace, and who was physically, mentally 
and sympathetically altogether the livest human 
being on this earth when God touched his heart, 
and girded him for his matchless service to Amer- 
ica and the world. 

" If he do but touch the hills they shall smoke," 
sang the Psalmist. What, then, if God touched 
the heart of a man? Let fiery Moses on Sinai as 
he trembles with indignation at the sight of the 
Golden Calf — let fiery Washington at Kip's Bay, 
at Trenton, at Princeton, at Monmouth, and in 
his trenchant letters to Congress, make answer! 

The marble shaft in Washington City tells only 
half the truth about him in whose honor it was 
erected. It speaks well for his lofty purity and 
his majestic bearing, but its cold white blocks 
tell nothing of the fierce fires that burned within 
the full-blooded Washington from the days of his 
youth when he went forth into the wilderness re- 
joicing as a giant to run his course and to match 
his prowess against wild beast or savage to the 



WASHINGTON 43 

day when with undimmed eye and natural force 
unabated God called him to his great reward. 
That hollow shaft would only be a fit symbol of 
Washington if it were converted into the chimney 
of a blast furnace and from time to time smoke- 
less flame were seen leaping from its summit. 

If Washington was cold, he was only cold as 
the snow-clad volcano is cold. It is written, 
" Our God is a consuming fire." The man whose 
heart God touches, as we have every reason to 
believe he touched the heart of Washington, is 
never an icicle. He may, if he be great enough, 
attain " the energetic passion of repose." He 
will certainly burn his smoke, if he be a man after 
God's heart. But within he will be a burning 
fiery furnace. 

Washington was splendidly human. Sometimes 
he was pathetically human. To know him well 
is to love him. Not to love him is to lose a rare 
patriotic opportunity. To love him is an honor 
to any heart and an inspiration. I thank God 
for the proud privilege of receiving this " shining 
soul," this " modest glory," this incomparable 
human-hearted gentleman, and soldier, and states- 
man, and patriot into my inmost heart as my own 
great dear countryman. 



IV 
PAXOMANIACS : OR PACIFISTS RUN MAD 

A series of articles published in the Baltimore 
Evenvng Sun, April- June, 1917. 



PAXOMANIACS : OR PACIFISTS RUN MAD 



What is a Paxomaniac? There is no use in 
looking in the dictionary for the word. You will 
not find it. It is a brand new word — just 
brought to birth by Necessity, the mother of in- 
vention. 

But so is the word " pacifist " a new word ; so 
new that it appears neither in the New Standard 
Dictionary of 1913 nor the Century Dictionary 
of 1914. Presumably the word is a product of 
the belligerent (not to say contentious, contro- 
versial, enraged, exasperated, exasperating, fight- 
ing, furious, harsh, hateful, hostile, irritated, irri- 
tating, provoked, provoking, quarrelsome, stormy, 
tumultuous, turbulent, warlike) peace propaganda 
now being waged in England and the United 
States. It would not be fair to say the smell of 
powder started this propaganda, but that the 
fresh smell of it has greatly accelerated the speed 
of our peace-makers goes without saying. How- 
ever that may be, the word " pacifist " seems to 
have been coined — certainly it has been appro- 
priated — by the two-forty-on-the-shell-road (not 
to say typhoonish, tornadoish, whirlwindish) 
peace propagandist as a pleasing description of 

47 



48 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

himself as a super-apostle (I had almost said, a 
super-messiah) of peace in these rambunctious 
times. 

Ask a self-confessed, simon-pure " pacifist " to 
define this word, — which when you first look at 
it appears innocent enough, and such a word as 
might be fairly descriptive of your own attitude 
towards your fellowmen — and (presto! change!) 
he skins up a sort of greasy pole to a dizzy height, 
stands on the tip of it, improvises a halo about 
his head, spins around like a dancing dervish, stops 
suddenly, points a scornful finger at some such 
calm, tranquil, conciliatory, gentle, meek, mild, 
peaceable, neighborly gentleman as (say) William 
Howard Taft, and with a withering look upon his 
face, cries, " Do you see that bold, bad, brutal, 
blood-thirsty, militaristic monster? Thank God 
I am not what he is ! i am a pacifist ! ! My 
motto is : Peace at any price. My belief is that 
the use of force is absolutely diabolical; so abso- 
lutely diabolical that it is a waste of time to at- 
tempt to differentiate between the use of force 
by the Kaiser in the invasion of Belgium and the 
use of force by Jesus Christ in the cleansing of 
the Temple. I suspect, however, the scene in the 
Temple has been incorrectly reported by witnesses 
with militaristic preconceptions. Any way, Force 
is fiendish. Peace is the be-all, the do-all, the 
end-all of mankind. Peace is the one and only 
panacea." Here a look of alarm comes into his 
face. Like a flash of greased lightning he de- 



PAXOMANIACS 49 

scends from his top-lofty perch, and darts off the 
instant he hits the common earth. " Whither so 
fast away, O passionate pilgrim of peace? " you 
cry. Back comes the answer like a ball tossed 
over the head : " I have a daughter at home for 
whose safety I fear in these times when so many 
lustful brutes are abroad ! " Or, perhaps, the 
answer is : " My night watchman is sick abed. 
I must myself keep watch over my wife and chil- 
dren, my cattle, chicks and chattels, tonight ! " 
If the answer had been a twelve-pound shot and 
had struck you in the solar plexus, it could hardly 
have knocked the wind more completely out of 
you. To say that you are dumbfounded is to put 
it mildly. You are flabbergasted in the last de- 
gree. When you come to your pacifist friend has 
disappeared. You stand gazing in the direction 
in which he went, and then, if you happen to know 
it, the story of the old country fellow who met 
a camel face to face for the first time at a circus 
comes into your mind, and you say, with a feeling 
of relief, " Gosh ! there ain't no sich ! " 

But you are wrong — just as wrong as old 
Reuben. There are people at large in England 
and America who talk and behave just about as 
preposterously as the sweet gentleman who called 
forth your explosive remark. And those people 
call themselves " Pacifists." That's the word they 
have invented or appropriated by which to call 
themselves. But they really are Paxomaniacs. 

(The reader is referred to " Through the Look- 



50 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

ing-Glass and What Alice Found There " — espe- 
cially the chapters on Tweedledum and Tweedle- 
dee, in which the poem on The Walrus and the 
Carpenter appears, and the chapter called w It's 
My Own Invention," in which the story of the Red 
and White Knights is given — if he would under- 
stand the " pacifist " mind, or rather, let me say, 
if he would not be altogether obfuscated in his 
effort to understand it.) 

I am sure the word " paxomaniac " is a better 
word to describe the sort of person I have in mind 
than is the word " pacifist " ; and I cannot but 
feel that it is fairer to the English language and 
to the large number of normal-minded persons of 
pacific temperament who speak it to designate this 
sort of a person as a paxomaniac rather than as 
a pacifist. Every well-disposed person is, or cer- 
tainly humbly hopes to be, a pacifist ; — unless 
you give the word a strained, artificial, pathologi- 
cal meaning. To accuse all of the English-speak- 
ing race except the pitiful little flock of people 
who call themselves pacifists of being haters of 
or traitors to peace, is to write oneself down 
either as a fool or a fanatic of the most hopeless 
kind, and to slash to pieces with one's tongue both 
the Ninth Commandment and the Golden Rule. 
" The times have been," says Macbeth, " That, 
when the brains were out, the man would die." If 
these were such times as those, to think of making 
such an accusation would be positively suicidal. 

Now these vociferous peace-at-any-price people 



PAXOMANIACS 51 

who call themselves pacifists are not mere paci- 
fists. They are pacifists run mad. They are pac- 
ifists who have " gone juramentado " — as we used 
to say about the fanatical Moro in the Philippines 
who took an oath to die killing Christians — and 
are running amuck. They are peace blinded paci- 
fists. There is a saying among Mohammedans, 
" See Mecca and die," a variant of which is, " See 
Mecca and see no more." And it is said that 
certain devout Moslems literally obey these words 
by gazing at white-hot bricks after beholding the 
Prophet's tomb until their sight is destroyed, so 
that what they are pleased to call the " supreme 
vision " shall be their last earthly sight. These 
English and American pacifists who have peeped 
at Peace through a key-hole or rifle-barrel, or 
gazed at the big toe or the back of Peace, until 
they are peace-blinded — blind to everything else 
but Peace, and who have but a partial and dis- 
torted vision of Peace — are the spiritual kith 
and kin of these frenzied Moslem zealots. Psy- 
chologically, yes, and pathologically, they belong 
in the same category. Each is the victim of a re- 
ligious craze. The peace-at-any-price pacifist is 
peace-crazy. He is no longer a mere pacifist. 
He is a paxomaniac. Mentally, he is a martyr 
to Peace, somewhat though not on the same plane 
as the Irish woman who said she was a martyr to 
drink. 



PAXOMANIACS: OR PACIFISTS RUN MAD 

II 

Let us make it perfectly plain at the outset 
of this second article on " paxomaniacs " that I 
am not laboring under the delusion that all paci- 
fists are victims of the insidious mental and moral 
malady I venture to call paxomania. 

The paxomaniac, as I have said, is the pacifist 
run mad. He is the slavish purblind devotee of 
Pax, the mythical Roman goddess of peace, by 
whom he has been bewitched and unmanned, as the 
companions of Ulysses were bewitched and un- 
manned by the enchantress Circe. 

Of course the ultra-pacifist or paxomaniac will 
say that it is before the Prince of Peace, and not 
Pax, that he prostrates himself. For the present 
I postpone further comment upon this claim than 
to say it seems to me the devotion of the paxo- 
maniac is too lacking in masculinity and vera- 
ciousness to be inspired by, and too overloaded 
with femininity and freakishness to be very ac- 
ceptable to, the Prince of Peace. 

Such sentimental devotion might please a myth- 
ical, mystical goddess. A Real Man it could not 
please. 

The Prince of Peace might, out of pity, suffer 

52 



PAXOMANIACS 53 

it. He could not possibly enjoy it. He never 
wasted his time pouring rosewater on toads. He 
called Herod a fox. I would not venture to say 
what he would have called Bernstorff; but I have 
a strong feeling the epithet would have satisfied 
the most ardent patriot. And I would wager my 
eternal soul upon it that he would not have sent 
a bouquet to Bernstorff or a message of good will 
through him to his bad willed brethren who at 
the moment were plowing the breast of Belgium 
and sucking her blood like a vampire. The Prince 
of Peace was not a paxomaniac — either a real 
one or an imitation one. The peace-at-any-price 
palaver would have stank in His nostrils. 

Before speaking further about paxomaniacs, let 
me say a few words about three other kinds of 
present day " pacifists " (by which I mean super- 
or ultra-pacifists), who have been helping to make 
the welkin ring with peace cries and yells and 
screams and shrieks. 

It will not be necessary to say anything at all 
in this connection about such reasonable and rep- 
utable advocates of righteous and disinterested 
peace as those who have figured in the meetings 
held at The Hague before the present war, or 
those who are identified with the movement for a 
World Court or with the League to Enforce Peace. 
The Emergency Peace Federation, with its disin- 
genuous demand for a " popular referendum vote," 
is altogether too hysterical, if not too hypocriti- 
cal, to be classed as reputable. It smells too 



54 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

strongly of German cologne. It is too full of 
pro-Prussian peace piffle, which sticks in any hon- 
est throat even when spooned up and crammed 
down by " Mrs. J. Sergeant Cram, For the Com- 
mittee." And Amos Pinchot with his paste and 
pinch-beck peace propaganda is perfectly prepos- 
terous. Amy is a scream. 

First I shall speak of such " pacifists " as Henry 
Ford and Dr. Kirchway. And yet there are re- 
cent indications that both Henry and the Doctor 
have at least heard Wisdom crying on the sea or 
in the streets, and have come to repentance and 
a better mind. Since that frightfully patriotic 
offer of his to the President, from the standpoint 
of a paxomaniac Henry is a shameful outlaw seek- 
ing to imbrue his hands in the blood of holy Huns 
and to interfere sacrilegiously with their pious 
piratical plans. And since Dr. Kirchway has 
fallen from grace in the eyes of those with whom he 
has been flocking and vociferating by saying 
" There is no question as to the duty of the Presi- 
dent to protect American rights on land and sea 
... I believe in peace so long as we can have it 
with honor. When we can't, I want to fight " — 
the New York Times speaks of him as " a pacifist 
with lots of company," meaning us. 

But as it is still a question as to how soundly 
converted Henry and the Doctor are; and as 
their hearts are still fluttering at the thought of 
what might have been accomplished by their voy- 
age and vociferation if only this world had been 



PAXOMANIACS 55 

populated with the sort of people that that sort 
of thing appeals to ; and as they are in some meas- 
ure responsible for the vagaries of their quondam 
shout-fellows ; and as they are representative of a 
class of people whose emotions sometimes run away 
with their common sense so fast and far that it is 
difficult for Wisdom to call them back, and yet 
who have that in them to which Wisdom could 
make an effective appeal once she was given a 
hearing — it seems to me fair that mention should 
be made of them. 

But of course they are not paxomaniacs. They 
were threatened with paxomania, at one time they 
seemed to have an alarming number of the germs 
of the disease in their brains, but they managed 
to thin them out sufficiently before they were 
completely victimized. They escaped by the skin 
of their teeth. The fact that they escaped (let 
it be said in passing) keeps alive in one's heart 
the hope for one's friends who are in the incipient, 
or even secondary, stages of the malign malady. 

Secondly, I must mention the " pacifist " whose 
devotion to peace-at-any-price is the outgrowth 
of his social or economic theories, rather than of 
his religious convictions. He is probably a So- 
cialist, and apt to be affiliated with the Socialist 
Party. He is pumped full of such historic slush 
as that all wars are of capitalistic origin and are 
waged at the cost of the working-class for the 
benefit of the capitalist class. Sometimes he is 
so far gone that he speaks of the flag of his coun- 



56 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

try as the capitalist's flag, for which he has little 
or no respect. He resolves, partly for his own 
sake, partly for the sake of the working-class, 
not to assist in any way in fighting the battles of 
capitalism. While his resolution is not without 
a touch of humaneness, especially towards those 
of his own class, the dominating motive back of 
it is one of policy. " Pacifism is the best policy 
for the proletariat " is the one big thought in his 
mind. Cut out war and the proletariat will win 
out in its fight with the master-class, he thinks. 
I do not call this social or economic pacifist a 
paxomaniac, as he is in ninety-nine cases out of a 
hundred ready enough to fight — if he is allowed 
to stage the fight. Just as a matter of social 
policy, of social strategy, he coolly decides to re- 
sist as far as possible the pressure brought to 
bear upon him to make him fight for the powers 
that be. Their fight, he thinks, is not, cannot be, 
his fight. " Let them fight their fight, and I'll 
fight mine." Of course he might take this same 
view about paying taxes, with no worse show of 
reason ; or, for the matter of that, the view of the 
philosophical anarchist, and ask, with a shrug of 
the shoulders, Why a State at all? 

It is hardly necessary for me to add that though 
I call myself a Socialist I take precious little stock 
in this ignorant and ignoble phase of Socialism. 
To call the man a fool or a knave who claims the 
privileges of American citizenship, and yet foams 
out his shame by talking of higher loyalty to some 



PAXOMANIACS 57 

other flag than the Stars and Stripes, seems to 
me to be giving him more honor than is his due. 
Whatever attitude the State might take toward 
such tainted citizenship in peace times, in war 
times, the State would be justified in requiring 
its citizens without exception to make choice be- 
tween the Stars and Stripes and the bars and 
stripes. 

And yet, and yet, this perverted loyalty on the 
part of some of our unprivileged fellow-citizens is 
the rotten-ripe fruit of the rank undergrowth that 
springs from the seed of anti-social selfishness 
sown and nurtured by some of those who are fond 
of thinking of themselves as our " best citizens," 
and who are our privileged fellow-citizens. For 
these to rail at those is for the pot to call the 
kettle black. There would be less flouting of the 
flag if there were less looting " within the law " 
under the flag. 

But I am very far from trying to justify those 
who flout the flag. Un-Americanism, anti-pa- 
triotism, sedition, are not an essential feature of 
pure Socialism. They are a cutaneous affection 
of uncleansed Socialism. They are no more an 
essential part of the fraternal economic program 
that offers itself to the world for the betterment 
of the whole human brotherhood under the name 
of Socialism than scrofula is an essential part 
of the human skin. 

Thirdly, let me make mention of the pro-German 
and anti-British hypocrite who not long ago vainly 



58 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

tried to hide his hateful hypocrisy behind the 
word " neutral " (which he did so much to dis- 
credit) and who is now vainly trying to hide it 
behind the word " pacifist " (which he has done 
even more to discredit). "For ways that are 
dark and tricks that are vain " the Heathen 
Chinee is not in it with this professional advocate 
of private treachery and public pusillanimity. 
The shame of it is their name is " Legion." 
There are many who believe you only have to 
scratch a " pacifist " to find a pro-Prussian or a 
Sinn Feiner. That is perhaps putting it too 
strongly, but there is truth enough in it to bring 
the whole " pacifist " propaganda under the grav- 
est suspicion. It is not unfair to say that the 
American " pacifist " is at this moment the paid 
or unpaid, the acknowledged or unacknowledged, 
servant of the will of Prussianism in America. 
He is the pliant tool of Prussian chicanery and 
treachery. Consciously or unconsciously he sings 
and dances and cavorts to Prussian tunes, to the 
Kaiser's delight. So true is this, that for the 
time being the very name of peace sounds un- 
pleasant to patriotic American ears, and one is 
tempted to paraphrase Madame Roland's pas- 
sionate outcry and say, " O Peace ! Peace ! how 
many crimes are committed in thy name ! " Such 
shameful usage has Peace suffered of late at the 
hands of her false friends, so has her visage been 
marred and her garments besmirched, that I some- 
times wonder whether she will ever shine forth 



PAXOMANIACS 59 

again in the heart of humanity in the beauty of 
her holiness until she has been baptized afresh in 
blood or purified by fire. Certain it is that her 
true lovers must save her, at whatever cost, from 
her false friends. These false friends of peace I 
do not call paxomaniacs, however much like paxo- 
maniacs they may look and act. They can make 
no claim to forgiveness on the ground of not 
knowing what they do. It is not to the Phipps 
Psychiatric Clinic that they should be sent if war 
comes and they persist in their activities. The 
problem they present is rather a penological than 
a pathological one. 

Lest misunderstanding arises from the omission 
let me say that my regard for loyal Americans of 
German descent is as great as my regard for any 
of my fellow-citizens. Among these there are 
those I love and wholly trust. 

Coming back now to the paxomaniac (whose 
case I have especially in mind in these articles) I 
want to speak to the differentiating claim he 
makes for himself and his fellows of being " pro- 
truth, pro-humanity, and pro-Christian." But I 
must leave this for my next article. 



PAXOMANIACS : OR PACIFISTS RUN MAD 

III 

In considering the extraordinary claims of the 
paxomaniac to a higher than ordinary morality, 
humanity and Christianity, the obliquity of the 
super-pacifist approaches Egyptian darkness. In 
this darkness he stands and prays thus with him- 
self : " God, I thank Thee that I am not as other 
men are ! " A. M. Simons, a Socialist, recently 
emerged from the twilight, if not the midnight of 
pacifism, having in mind this pharisaical phase 
of this mental and moral malady, does not hesi- 
tate to call the ultra-pacifist a snob. Such an 
opinion, coming from such a source, is worth 
attending to ; and if a snob be defined as one who 
pretends to a superiority he does not possess, and 
who speaks to his betters as if they were his in- 
feriors because they refuse to enter into his fool's 
paradise, it is an opinion shared by about 90 per 
cent, of the hundred million people who call them- 
selves Americans. It is the opinion of all those 
for whom President Wilson spoke in his message 
to Congress on April 2. It is the opinion of all 
Americans, except those aliened-souled residents 
of the United States for whom La Follette spoke 

on April 4, that Senator from Wisconsin with the 

60 



PAXOMANIACS 61 

bee of Berlin in his brain, that Vallandigham up 
to date, whose " honor rooted in dishonor stood " 
and whose " faith unfaithful kept him falsely 
true." If there are other exceptions the burden 
of proof is upon them at such a time as this to 
show it. 

In The Evening Sun of February 19 there ap- 
peared an unsigned article entitled " A Pacifist's 
Statement of the Pacifist Position." The article, 
I have good reason to believe, was written by one 
of the leading " pacifists " of this community and 
one who may be regarded as a fair spokesman for 
the " pacifists " generally. In the course of this 
article the author makes this differentiating claim 
in behalf of the " pacifists " : 

" I shall only answer for myself and all with 
whom I am associated in the effort to present and 
to strengthen the cause of peace, that we are not 
pro-German, but pro-truth, pro-humanity and 
pro-Christian in intent, notice and effort." Let 
me now speak to this extraordinary claim of a 
higher than ordinary morality, humanity and 
Christianity. 

Space forbids saying anything further about 
the relation of " pacifism " and " pro-Germanism " 
than this : That they are under existing circum- 
stances of very necessity closely related — pos- 
sibly as closely as the Siamese twins, but cousins 
German at the remotest. The hope of Hohenzol- 
lernism in America is " pacifism." It is a con- 
temptible hope, but it is the only hope. However 



(ML PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

immaculate the " pacifist " may believe himself to 
be (whether or not he has lied to himself), "in 
intent, motive and effort," in effect he is pro- 
German. If he is a pacifist run mad, he is as 
serviceable a tool of Prussianism as if his mind 
bore the imprint " Made in Germany." It is in 
vain for him to answer the charge of pro-German- 
ism with a " I know not what thou sayest," for the 
very breath with which he speaks, nine times out 
of ten or oftener, is tainted with the ethical 
rottenness that has all but destroyed the soul 
of Germany. However regrettable this may be 
from the standpoint of one who proposes to save 
the foe-beset world by an endless chain of sopho- 
moric declamation, it is an incontrovertible fact. 
The truth of this is so palpable it would seem as 
if a wayfaring man, though a William Jennings 
Bryan, or even an Amos Pinchot or a David Starr 
Jordan, could not fail to see it. And the " paci- 
fist " who is not ready to be reckoned with the 
transgressors (whether the " Loyalists " of Revo- 
lutionary days or the " Copperheads " of the 
Civil War) would do well to take to heart the 
famous saying of Bishop Butler: 

" Things are what they are, and the conse- 
quences of them will be, so why do we wish to 
deceive ourselves." But let us pass on. Is a 
more than ordinary regard for truth, for veracity, 
one of the noteworthy characteristics of the ultra- 
pacifist or paxomaniac? 

That the very reverse is true is my deliberate 



PAXOMANIACS 63 

judgment, formed after hearing and reading 
wholesome quantities of the best the propaganda 
has to say for itself, much of it from the lips and 
pens of those toward whom I had the friendliest 
disposition. And this judgment is sustained by 
the overwhelming weight of public opinion. It is 
well-nigh universal. The strongest impression 
made upon me by the oral arguments and the 
advertisements of the ultra-pacifists is that of un- 
soundness, of unveraciousness. I would hesitate 
to call the typical ultra-pacifist or paxomaniac a 
liar (unless he intimated that opposition to his 
propaganda was based upon financial considera- 
tions), but that he is "mighty careless with the 
truth " I am absolutely convinced. He plays all 
manner of tricks with history. Facts he ignores, 
creates, or dresses up as suits his immediate needs. 
The way in which he falls for what Tommy Atkins 
calls an " Hun-truth " if it seems to promise even 
a moment's aid, and the way in which he falls in 
behind any old Pied Piper of Hamlin who plays a 
peace tune, is oftentimes positively pathetic. 
The Pantheon of Pacifists, with its busts of Bryan 
and Bernstorff, La Follette and " Gum-Shoe Bill," 
Bertrand Russell and David Starr Jordan and 
Amos Pinchot with an armful of paste and pinch- 
beck peace creations, is a Chamber of Horrors to 
one who has not been stricken with this peace-at- 
any-price mania. 

So far as veracity is concerned, the atmosphere 
of ultra-pacifism is suffocating to the man of aver- 



64 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

age intellectual honesty, who faces facts fear- 
lessly, thinks straight, follows his thought directly 
to its goal and shapes his conduct accordingly. 
To turn from an essay of Matthew Arnold to a 
piece of ultra-pacifist literature is to pass from a 
reasonable into a topsy turvy world. Every page 
one turns one expects to see Tweedledum and 
Tweedledee, and to hear the former say: 

" I know what you're thinking about ; but it 
isn't so, nohow," and the latter continue : 

" Contrariwise, if it was so, it might be ; and if 
it were so, it would be, but as it isn't, it ain't. 
That's logic." 

The truth is safe in the hands of no man who 
is short on humor. And that is just where al- 
most if not all ultra-pacifists break down. I have 
tried some of them on Bairnsfather's cartoons and 
seen a distressed look come into their faces and 
heard them say : "I see nothing amusing about 
that. War is too serious a matter to be joked 
about." 

After the above criticism of the " pro-truth " 
claim of the ultra-pacifists, perhaps I ought to 
justify myself by citations. It is not easy to do 
that satisfactorily in an article of this length. 

First, then. Here is a half-page advertisement 
before me, in which the Duke of Wellington, Vis- 
count James Bryce, Stonewall Jackson, Richard 
Harding Davis and Napoleon Bonaparte are 
quoted as though they would be glad to be num- 
bered among the " pacifists " in glory if they only 



PAXOMANIACS 65 

had the chance. Perhaps this is too absurd to be 
called dishonest, but it makes the truth feel un- 
comfortable all the same. I don't mean to say the 
men did not use the words attributed to them. 
But no person of intelligence could for a moment 
suppose they meant them to mean what your radi- 
cal pacifist tries to make them mean. This sort 
of " carelessness with the truth " is a common 
failing among the advocates of peace-at-any- 
price. 

Secondly. After a meeting at the Central 
Young Men's Christian Association in Philadel- 
phia, at which an address was delivered on " Chris- 
tianity, Not Non-Resistance," when the hall had 
been emptied of all save " half a dozen men and 
Miss Margaret Cope Aubrey of the Woman's 
Peace League," a telegram was framed and sent to 
Washington announcing to President Wilson that 
" the meeting without dissent " urged peace. Sec- 
retary Eaton of the Young Men's Christian Asso- 
ciation, with whom I happened to dine next day, 
was indignant over the matter, and as soon as he 
learned of it sent a telegram to Washington dis- 
claiming responsibility for the telegram both on 
the part of the association and the meeting at 
which the address was delivered. This is the 
second instance of a petty trick of this kind that 
has come under my immediate notice. In the 
other case it was discovered before the telegram 
was actually sent and blocked. 

Thirdly. Two of the great " classics " of 



66 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

ultra-pacifism are " New Wars for Old," by John 
Haynes Holmes, and " Why Men Fight," by Ber- 
trand Russell. For John Haynes Holmes, when 
not functioning as a paxomaniac, I have a high 
regard, but this specious, spidery, saccharine plea 
of his for pusillanimity bedizened with the paint 
and powder of radical pacifism, makes absolutely 
no appeal to me. It nauseates me. I put the 
book down with a sigh, murmuring, " Ichabod ! 
Ichabod ! " and praying that the eclipse will not 
be too prolonged. 

Listen to this: "To such persons (radical 
pacifists), a nation appeals simply and solely as 
an idea or group of ideas." " Germany (is) 
... an idea of culture." " And just here in this 
spiritual idea of nationality do we find the su- 
preme, the unanswerable vindication of the men 
who would save America at this time from mili- 
tarism." " If you look upon America as a great 
ideal of the spirit, independent of territory and 
population and wealth, then all such things as 
armies and navies become matters of supreme in- 
difference. For the spirit is impregnable to all 
the attacks that the hand of man can bring 
against it." " What if Germany came here to- 
day as she came to Belgium yesterday 1 " "A 
free people would still be free, even though in 
chains." And so on, ad nauseam. It is enough 
to raise the price of bi-carbonate of soda ! 

As to Bertrand Russell, while he occasionally 
lapses into sense, he can generally be depended 



PAXOMANIACS 67 

upon in his plea for cowardice to be not only 
intellectually but morally unsound, not to say 
putrid. It has been some days since I read his 
book and I still smell it. He queries whether 
national independence is worth the price paid for 
it. Then, without a smile, he gets off this : " I 
cannot doubt that, before the war, a hegemony of 
this kind (over the whole world!) would have 
abundantly satisfied the Germans." Here is a 
choice specimen : " What is desirable in a Legis- 
lature is, not that it should decide by its personal 
sense of right, but that it should decide in a way 
which is felt to make an appeal to force unneces- 
sary." 

Next. Is a more than ordinary regard for 
humanity one of the noteworthy characteristics 
of the ultra-pacifist or paxomaniac? 

I confess that in view of the dumbness of the 
vociferous advocates of peace-at-any-price when 
confronted with the invasion, occupation, robbery 
and rape of Belgium, with the Armenian mas- 
sacres, with the sinking of the Lusitania, with the 
deportation of Belgian civilians, and such prus- 
sianlike barbarities, and their eager readiness to 
try to make out a case for Germany, it seems to 
me the very question is an insult to ordinary hu- 
manity. Whatever the paxomaniac may stand 
for in theory, I could not for a moment admit that 
he stands for a nobler kind of humanity in fact. 
Quite the contrary. Were his claim well-founded 
I should be in utter despair of humanity. It 



68 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

would convince me that humanity was rotten to 
the core. When men stand by while some Tarquin 
rapes a woman like Lucretia, or some Kaiser rapes 
a nation like Belgium, and oppose nothing, or 
nothing but sentimentality, between the woman or 
the nation and her foul fate, and after the black 
deed is done, regard the woman or the nation with 
a feeling of coldness or irritation, and apologize 
for the villain, and try to trip up those who go 
to the rescue of the victim, the abomination of 
desolation will be standing where it ought not on 
this earth, and the damnation of mankind will no 
longer slumber, nor ought it. I have listened to 
more than enough of the fine talk of the ultra- 
pacifist. I have taken absolutely no stock in such 
cheap, shoddy, nasty stuff. It is distinctly dis- 
creditable to the human heart. Moral insanity is 
the only possible excuse for it. The paxomaniac 
glories in what normal people call shame. At 
least that is the way he talks. Maybe his bark 
is worse than his bite. 



PAXOMANIACS : OR PACIFISTS RUN MAD 

IV 

Is a more than ordinary regard for the prin- 
ciples of Christianity one of the noteworthy char- 
acteristics of the ultra-pacifist or paxomaniac? 

In answering the second question the answer to 
this one was substantially given. But several 
other things ought to be said. 

And first a word or two about Moses, through 
whom came the commandment " Thou shalt do no 
murder." It seems that this commandment, more 
than any other moral precept, except one, is re- 
sponsible for the morbid hysteria of the ultra- 
pacifist on the subject of war. He has worked 
himself into a state of mind in which he thinks that 
public killing is just as wicked as private killing, 
and that the cause for the killing has absolutely 
nothing to do with the case? We should remind 
ourselves that Moses was under no such delusion. 
He not only approved of the killing of men in 
what he regarded as a necessary war, and showed 
it by ordering his people to fight, and by taking 
those to task who attempted to dodge their share 
of the fighting, but he provided for capital pun- 
ishment in his criminal code. 

A word or two about the prophecy of Isaiah 

69 



70 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

to the effect that nations " shall beat their swords 
into plowshares and their spears into pruning 
hooks ; nation shall not lift up sword against na- 
tion, neither shall they learn war any more." 
This prophecy, which appears both in Isaiah and 
Micah, plays a prominent part in all peace propa- 
ganda. It is a noble prophecy, and worthy of all 
honor. But it is not entirely honest to quote it 
without giving its context, which goes to show 
that the prophecy, in the case of both prophets, 
was a kind of Utopian dream. In both instances 
the prophecy is preceded by the words, " It shall 
come to pass in the last days." On the other 
hand, the prophet Joel, addressing the world im- 
mediately about him, cries : " Prepare war, wake 
up the mighty men, let all the men of war draw 
near; let them come up: Beat your plowshares 
into swords and your pruning hooks into spears ; 
let the weak say, I am strong." 

But the paxomaniac has an easy answer to any 
suggestion drawn from the Old Testament that 
tends to discredit his views. He ruthlessly sub- 
marines it. With a superior smile, he sends the 
book which was the university of Jesus to the 
bottom, much like the Kaiser sent the Lusitania. 
He takes no stock, he tells you, in any part of the 
Bible except the New Testament. 

Let us see, then, what kind of stock he takes in 
the New Testament. There are two texts in which 
he rings the changes. One, " Resist not evil," 
taken from the Sermon on the Mount (as reported 



PAXOMANIACS 71 

by Matthew; Luke reports it otherwise). The 
other, " They that take the sword shall perish 
with the sword," taken from the scene in the gar- 
den (as reported by Matthew; John reports it 
otherwise and certainly more truly). On these 
two sayings attributed to Jesus the paxomaniac 
hangs his doctrine of absolute nonresistance. For 
him these two sayings (especially the former) are 
the be-all and the end-all of the matter. Nothing 
else matters, or matters much. The sum and the 
substance of Christianity is this: The use of 
physical force is the unpardonable sin. Nothing 
achieved by the use of the least degree of physical 
force can possibly be acceptable to God. The 
Venus de Milo is his ideal of justice. The burden 
of Jesus was far less to persuade men to be some- 
thing or do something than to convince them that 
it would be better not to try to be anything or do 
anything than to try to be it or do it by the aid 
of force. So he thinks. 

If one ventures to remind the paxomaniac of 
such sayings of Jesus as " I came not to send 
peace, but a sword," and " He that hath no sword, 
let him sell his garment and buy one," and " If 
My kingdom were of this world, then would My 
servants fight," he says he interprets these in a 
figurative sense. It is useless to remind him that 
he has just been insisting upon interpreting his 
favorite passages with terrible literalness. He 
merely says, " That is different." 

If one ventures to suggest that the Sermon on 



72 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

the Mount was rather a prospectus of an ethical 
code of action to become fully operative only 
when the kingdom for which it was intended be- 
came somewhat of a reality (there are the plainest 
indications in the sermon itself that portions of it 
belong in the category of the idealistic prophecies 
of Isaiah and Micah) ; and that Jesus did not 
Himself in His everyday life live up to the require- 
ments of the sermon when strictly and narrowly 
interpreted, as witnessed by His use of physical 
force in the cleansing of the Temple and by His 
not turning the other cheek when He was smitten 
at the trial ; not to mention His admiration of the 
Roman centurion and the fact that He allowed at 
least two of His disciples to carry swords, and the 
personal invective He made use of upon occasions 
— if one does this, the paxomaniac makes one of 
two answers, each perfectly satisfactory to him- 
self. First, " You are evidently a militarist, and 
we can never agree about such matters." Sec- 
ond, " Jesus gained nothing by the use of physical 
force in the Temple. His conduct upon that oc- 
casion is an embarrassment to the cause of paci- 
fism. He should never have used that ' scourge 
of small cords ' or overturned the tables of the 
money-changers." I have had both these answers 
made to me. The state of the paxomaniac who 
makes the second is, of course, worse than that of 
the one who makes the first. He is not satisfied to 
be " as " his Lord ; he must be " above " Him. In 
personal conduct he proposes to out-messiah the 



PAXOMANIACS 73 

Messiah. He is a paxomaniac indeed. In the 
holy cause of peace-at-any-price he accepts 
" Gum-Shoe Bill " and his confederates, but he has 
misgivings even about the Hero of the New Testa- 
ment. And here we have the reductio ad absur- 
dum of this decadent cult. 

If one were to ask the paxomaniac what he 
makes of St. James' " Resist the devil and he will 
flee from you " ; or such a passage as this from 
the Revelation of St. John the Divine, " In right- 
eousness he doth judge and make war"; — he 
would probably tell you that he not only took no 
stock in the Old Testament, but not much stock 
in the New Testament outside of the Gospels ; and 
if he was thoroughly honest (at least this is so in 
the more extreme cases) he would tell you he took 
precious little stock in the Gospels except so far 
as they lent themselves to his propaganda. 

Let me bring these articles to a close with a 
quotation from Ferdinand Brunetiere, editor of 
the Revue des deaux Mondes, generally regarded 
as one of the finest living intellects. 

" Pacifism is essentially and fundamentally a 
coward's creed. Cowardice is based on the pro- 
found conviction that death is the greatest of evils 
because life is the greatest of goods. But for the 
honor of humanity it must be said that neither sen- 
timent is (generally believed to be) true. No, 
indeed; life is not the greatest of goods, for it is 
the fundamental principle of morality that many 
things ought to be preferred to life ; and death is 



74 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

by no means the greatest of evils, since our true 
manhood is undoubtedly to be measured by the 
height to which we rise above the fear of it." 

There you have it. Pacifism, especially that 
aggravated form of it I call paxomania, is a cow- 
ard's creed. I do not say that everyone victim- 
ized by it is a coward. But that does not alter 
the fact that the creed is essentially and funda- 
mentally cowardly. And because it is such, it is 
neither true, nor human, nor Christian. 

It is a far cry from this creed to the " Fear 
not them that kill the body " of Jesus, that Great 
Gentleman Unafraid, whose working maxim was, 
" Whoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it, 
and whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it ! " 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF NIETZSCHE 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF NIETZSCHE 



On August 25th, 1900, about noon, in the villa 
of " Silberblick," overlooking Weimar, the Holy 
City of Literary Germany, an extraordinary lu- 
natic died. 

For the last twelve years of his life this lunatic 
was absolutely dependent upon two women. Had 
the Mona Lisa been painted after this man's death 
by one familiar with his low views of women and 
his immense debt to them, we would know how to 
account for the subtile smile on her face. 

One of these two women was his mother. A dis- 
ciple of this man calls her a " true mater dolo- 
rosa." She died at Easter, 1897. The other was 
his sister. The last word he uttered, and she 
thinks he uttered it joyfully, was her name, " Eliz- 
abeth ! " His death was expected about noon of 
the day before he actually died. His sister speaks 
of this in her biography of him. " A frightful 
thunderstorm was raging at the time," she writes, 
" and it seemed as if this mighty spirit were to 
depart from the world amidst thunder and light- 
ning." An ardent disciple, referring to this pas- 
sage, says, " One involuntarily thinks of Napoleon 
when his attendants at St. Helena told him they 

had seen a comet flashing across the sky. 6 You 

77 



78 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

have seen a comet? Then I am going to die. A 
comet appeared just before Julius Caesar died.' 
And his death did take place not long afterwards." 

This sister was evidently greatly impressed by 
the passing of her brother. She writes : " Again 
he opened those wonderful eyes of his. He moved 
uneasily, opened his mouth, and shut it again, as 
if he had something to say and hesitated to say it. 
And it seemed to those who stood around that his 
face slightly reddened thereat. Then a light 
shudder ; a deep breath — and softly, silently, 
with one final majestic look, he closed his eyes 
forever. ' Thus it happened, that Zarathustra 
departed.' " 

" From far and near came the mourning friends 
and disciples," writes Dr. Mugge in his " Life and 
Work " of this man, to which I am much indebted 
for these Impressions. " The young Horneffer, 
later on editor in the Nietzsche-Archiv, came from 
Gottingen, and over the coffin in the house of 
mourning he delivered a worthy funeral oration. 
* To all futurity his life has become a school of 
independence. We do not wait over this coffin. 
The man who lies here is not dead. It is not the 
night of death which has come here — it is the 
dawn of a new day. I seem to see the dead man 
raise himself ; he stands erect, and a world throws 
itself at his feet!'" 

At the grave of this extraordinary lunatic in 
his native village of Rocken, Peter Gast, his life- 
long friend and disciple, delivered the following 



IMPRESSIONS OF NIETZSCHE 79 

address. Dr. Mugge ventures to call it " rather 
flamboyant," and J. M. Kennedy, author of " The 
Quintessence of Nietzsche," goes so far as to say, 
" At the first reading it may seem too stately and 
ceremonious " ; but both felt that it deserved to be 
quoted, the former in part, the latter in full, and 
preserved for posterity. 

"And now that thy body, after the majestic 
Odyssey of thy mind, has returned to its mother 
earth, I, as thy disciple, and in the name of all thy 
friends, deliver unto thee our heartfelt Thanks in 
memory of thy great past. 

"How could we be thy friends? Only because 
thou didst value us too highly! 

" What thou wast as a world-moving spirit is plain 
for all eyes to see; and what thy heart was is shown 
in the trend of thy thoughts. For the stamp of great- 
ness lies over all thou hast thought — and all great 
thoughts come, as Vauvenargues says, from the 
heart. 

" We, however, who had the good fortune to be 
near thee in daily life: we know only too well that 
the charm of thy person can never be adequately con- 
ceived from the thoughts in thy books. This has now 
left us forever. 

" What was said by the glance of thine eye, or by 
that remarkable mouth, was full of beauty and good- 
ness; it was a concealment of thy majesty: thou 
wouldst fain (to use one of thy own most tender 
phrases) thou wouldst fain spare us from shame. 
For who can show us another example of the wealth 
of thy spirit and the impulse of thy heart to do good 
unto others? 



80 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

" Thou wast one of the noblest and purest men that 
ever trod this earth. 

" And although this is known to both friend and 
foe, I do not deem it superfluous to utter this testi- 
mony aloud at thy tomb. For we know the world ; we 
know the fate of Spinoza ! Around Nietzsche's mem- 
ory, too, posterity may cast shadows ! And there- 
fore I close with the words: Peace to thy ashes! 
Holy be thy name to all coming generations ! " 

Once, in antebellum days, a Frenchman was 
dining with my grandfather at his country-seat in 
Mississippi. An old negro servant was waiting on 
the table. But he became so interested and 
amazed at the language of the French guest that 
he had to be reminded of his duties several times. 
Finally the strange phenomenon so completely 
overmastered him that he entirely forgot himself, 
and going up to my grandfather, and leaning over 
him as he sat at the head of the table, he said in 
a stage whisper and with a look of profound pity 
on his black face, " Marster, was he born so ? " 

What shall we say of the extraordinary lunatic 
over whose remains Peter Gast pronounced his 
" rather flamboyant " address in the summer of 
1900? In January, 1889, his ingrowing egotism 
had carried him up to the top of an exceeding 
high mountain in the interior parts of the human 
mind and, after he had fallen down and worshipped 
himself, had left him there under the mighty con- 
viction that he was a god. 

Which god he was, he was not quite sure. To 



IMPRESSIONS OF NIETZSCHE 81 

Frau Wagner, " the woman from whom Nietzsche's 
soul never freed itself," Dr. Mugge thinks, he 
wrote : " Ariadne, I love you ! — Dionysos." 
To Georg Brandes, the Danish critic, he wrote a 
letter " in very large handwriting on a sheet of 
ruled paper, signed Der Gekreuzigte, The Cruci- 
fied One." Of this letter the ardent English dis- 
ciple referred to above says : " So far as it is 
worth while deciphering its incoherence, we are led 
to suppose from it that Nietzsche identifies him- 
self with Jesus Christ, of whom he imagines him- 
self to be the successor and the ' best enemy.' " 
It was an exaggerated case of " Dr. Jekyll and 
Mr. Hyde," for with Nietzsche the better man (if 
I may be pardoned for the moment for thinking of 
Jesus Christ as better than Bacchus !) was at en- 
mity with himself. 

What shall we say of this extraordinary luna- 
tic? Was he born so? Certainly not! The 
very idea is absurd! Not only was Nietzsche not 
born insane, or even with the least tendency to- 
wards insanity, but he was up to the very end of 
the year 1888 absolutely sane and healthy-minded. 
Nobody but a full-fledged fool or a Christian, 
which is a distinction without a difference, could 
or would think otherwise. At least, this is the 
answer that the ardent disciples of Nietzsche 
would make to the above question. The sin 
against the Holy Ghost, if your disciple of 
Nietzsche believed either in sin or the Holy Ghost, 
would be to entertain the shadow of a doubt that 



82 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

this " erect " man, at whose feet the world is sup- 
posed to throw itself, was, up to the end of the 
year 1888, and especially the years 1881 up to 
1888, during which time his purely philosophical 
works were written, was not absolutely sane, did 
not enjoy the most perfect mental health. 

Unless you can accept this dictum, you have no 
chance whatever of being received in the inner 
circles of the simon-pure disciples of Nietzsche. 
The Virgin Birth of Jesus Christ, even among the 
straitest sect of Christian theologians, is hardly to 
be compared with the necessity of the belief in the 
Normal Action, the Perfect Process, of Nietzsche's 
mind from not later than 1881 up to at least 1887, 
if not up to the time of the acknowledged mental 
breakdown. 

" It must be clearly pointed out that this stroke 
of insanity came very suddenly," writes the ardent 
disciple who furnishes us with the " Quintessence " 
of Nietzsche. And lest we fail to swallow this 
barbed hook that he throws to us, baited with 
nothing better than warm assertion, he throws the 
hungry hook to us again in the same paragraph. 
He tells us that from the " year 1882 Nietzsche's 
health had been steadily improving," and that 
" he was, generally speaking, in a happy frame of 
mind and a sound state of body." He tells us 
that " in 1888 he produced a large amount of 
work, in no part of which can any traces of mad- 
ness be found by even the most sceptical inquirer." 
" His breakdown, then," he reiterates almost test- 



IMPRESSIONS OF NIETZSCHE 83 

ily, " took place with appalling suddenness be- 
tween January 1st and 4th, 1889." 

Even Dr. Mugge, who is a much more candid 
biographer than Mr. Kennedy, whose candor must 
indeed be adjudged by some of his fellow-disciples 
to go the full length of rashness if not of treach- 
ery, says : " After 1881 — and this is very im- 
portant to remember, for his purely philosophical 
works were written after that date ! — Nietzsche 
was comparatively well, and ' never had more than 
fourteen days of ill-health annually, up to 1887.' " 
One simply must swallow this hot dictum, and the 
moment it begins to burn commence to curse and 
to swear at the Truth " as it is in Jesus," and to 
continue to curse and to swear until one is blind 
and deaf and morally insane, if one is to have any 
real satisfaction and abiding peace in believing in 
Nietzsche. Otherwise, the temptation to believe, 
with G. M. Gould, that " it is certain that the so- 
called sudden stroke of 1888 was only the more 
apparent effect of thirty years of over-use and 
disease of the brain," and, with Chamberlain, that 
" the first signs of the fearful malady appeared 
as early as 1878, ' scattering the splendid intel- 
lect,' " will be, as we shall ourselves see before 
long, altogether too great to be successfully re- 
sisted. 

As early as 1878 we find Nietzsche writing: 
" As long as I was a real scholar, so long was I 
healthy; but then there came music, which shat- 
tered my nerves, and the metaphysical philosophy, 



84 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

and the care of a thousand things which ought not 
to have troubled me." 

Carlotta, his landlady in Genoa where he spent 
a part of 1880, relates that whenever reference 
was made in Nietzsche's hearing to one of her 
sons who died in an asylum, he used to whisper 
" Anch' io." He himself wrote to Gersdorff: 
" My father died at the age of 36 of inflamma- 
tion of the brain ; it is possible that it may take me 
off still earlier." 

Dr. Mugge tells us that in 1882 Nietzsche be- 
gan to take hydrate of chloral, and that " he 
admits that this always caused him to see men and 
things in a false light the next morning — show- 
ing, as in De Quincey's case, that the drug had 
' palsying effects on the intellectual faculties.' " 
" For this reason he again and again struggled to 
give up the use of that drug," says Dr. Mugge. 

That struggle was in vain;. The <(i Will to 
Power " failed to work for " Zarathustra " in the 
case of the drug-habit as dismally as Christian 
Science failed to work for " Mother Eddy " when 
she had to struggle with a good old-fashioned 
tooth-tache. 

We find Nietzsche writing to his brother-in-law, 
Dr. Foerster : " I take narcotic after narcotic, 
in order to alleviate my sorrow, and yet I cannot 
sleep. To-day I shall take so much that I shall 
lose my senses." 

Besides chloral, Dr. Mugge tells us that 
Nietzsche also used " an uncommon narcotic, 



IMPRESSIONS OF NIETZSCHE 85 

which an old Dutchman had brought from 
Java." 

And this candid Doctor of Philosophy gives his 
readers the benefit of the opinion of Dr. Ree, a 
plrysician, of his former friend Nietzsche. In 
1897 he wrote to a friend that " Nietzsche was a 
madman, a man craving for fame at any price, a 
poor, sick, and perhaps lunatic poet," whom he 
could never read, and whom to read at all was only 
possible in extracts. 

Nevertheless Dr. Mugge does not desert his 
hero. After he has shown him to us, as hopelessly 
punctured (so many will think), as St. Sebastian, 
according to European painters, the doughty 
Doctor martials his italics and marches them right 
across the middle of the page to the rescue of his 
master whom he calls " poet-philosopher, a lover 
of mankind, a prophet of a ' Christ that is to be,' " 
and whom he looks to to rescue humanity, or a 
saving remnant of it, from the abyss of Chris- 
tianity. " We are, however, bound to uphold our 
conviction that Nietzsche was never mad before 
the December of 1888, and we must call in ques- 
tion 6 the existence of a thirty years ' mental 
disease of which the stroke of apoplexy was only 
the visible effect. We must utterly denounce such 
a book as that of Svhacht, in which Nietzsche is 
described as already mad in 1886, and as a wicked 
scoundrel and boaster." 

I believe that every fair-minded man will with- 
out hesitation agree with the Doctor that he is 



86 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

absolutely bound, and not only bound, but mor- 
tised and glued, and not only bound and mortised 
and glued, but nailed and screwed, to the dictum 
he sets down in italics — if he means to be a 
Nietzscheanite. 

Just here I am reminded of the story of the 
bull-dog that stirred up a hive of bees, and then 
beat a hasty retreat to a barrel nearby, the far 
end of which was open, the head in the near end 
being intact but with a bung-hole in it. The plan 
of the bull-dog was to enter the barrel through the 
open end away from the bees, and then, safely 
ensconced in this block-house, to snap the bees up 
one by one as they came through the bung-hole. 
The plan left nothing to be desired from the point 
of view of the bull-dog — except the adherence 
to it on the part of the bees. The be-barreled 
bull-dog looked defiance through the bung-hole at 
the impassioned bees. On they came, humming 
their chant of hate, heedless, it seemed, of their 
hidden foe. Now he could almost see the whites 
of their eyes. He opened his mouth, involun- 
tarily closing his eyes as he did so. He snapped 
his lantern jaws. But he evidently mis-snapped, 
for there was no mangled bee between his teeth. 
He opened his eyes. No bees were in sight. Ah, 
thought he, the cowards espied me and have fled, 
the wish being father to thought. His logical 
mind had hit upon a half truth. They had es- 
pied him, but, dog-gone-it, they had not fled. 



IMPRESSIONS OF NIETZSCHE 87 

The next instant he heard the chant of hate be- 
hind him. Before he could reverse for the rear- 
attack the full force of the stinging blow of out- 
raged bee-dom had been delivered. They had 
" passed-up " the bung-hole in favor of the open 
end of the barrel! 

The moral of which is that the bung-hole logic 
of this befuddled bull-dog left something to be de- 
sired! And if it is not too unkind to say so, the 
pathetic effort of Dr. Mugge to barricade his con- 
viction that " Nietzsche was never mad before 
1888 " behind a couple of lines of italics has some- 
how reminded me of this bit of bung-hole logic. 
The doctor's position is as vulnerable as that of 
the bull-dog. And in this the disciple is like his 
master. 

The strength of Nietzscheism is dependent upon 
its success in inducing the human mind to pass 
over its preposterous pons asinorwm, or through 
the fang-guarded bung-hole through which it 
squints at human life. 

I have so much affection and esteem for dogs 
that I am somewhat ashamed of the base uses to 
which this dog has been put, and while I am only 
partly responsible for the indignity, I feel that I 
ought to apologize to my canine friends. I do so, 
making my kow-tao, and if that is not sufficient I 
will add a bow-wow to my bow. 

The first complete and authorized English 
translation of the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, 



88 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

published by the Macmillan Company, and edited 
by Dr. Oscar Levy, a passionate disciple, com- 
prises eighteen volumes, including an Index, but 
not including some eighteen volumes of posthu- 
mous publications printed by the Nietzsche Ar- 
chives, of Weimar, under the direction of Nietz- 
sche's sister, Frau Foerster-Nietzsche. Nat- 
urally, the length of this paper forbids us to do 
more than take a cursory glance at the contents 
of these books. Indeed we may not be able to do 
so much as peep into all of them. So far as we 
are able to look into them, however, we shall look 
through the eyes of Nietzsche's disciple Dr. 
Mugge. But before we take a look into these 
books at all, let us acquaint ourselves somewhat 
further with the life of the author. 

Nietzsche was born October 15, 1844, twelve 
years after Goethe's death, and thirty-one years 
after Wagner's birth. His father, through the 
grace of King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia, 
was at the time pastor of the village of Rocken, 
in Saxony. Nietzsche was christened " Friedrich 
Wilhelm " as a memento of his father's royal bene- 
factor. The family evidently had an eye to 
princes. Nietzsche was pleased to think, whether 
on adequate ground is questioned by Dr. Mugge, 
that he was of noble Polish descent, and he loved 
to be addressed and spoken of by the populace as 
" il Polacco." He was the eldest of three chil- 
dren. His little brother Joseph died soon after 
his birth. We know that Elizabeth survived him. 



IMPRESSIONS OF NIETZSCHE 89 

His father died when Nietzsche was not quite five. 
The event made a deep impression upon the boy. 
" A vision of his father often appeared in his 
nightly dreams." Soon after the death of her 
husband, Nietzsche's mother, Franziska Oehler, 
then twenty-four, moved to the nearby town of 
Naumburg to live with her mother-in-law, Frau 
Dr. Nietzsche, and two sisters of her late husband. 
" Here, surrounded by feminine influence and 
guided by women's hands, Nietzsche spent his early 
childhood." " He became somewhat feminine in 
his habits," says Dr. Mugge, whom I am follow- 
ing closely, sometimes with, and sometimes with- 
out quotation marks. 

After scarcely a year at the Elementary School 
at Naumburg, where he was not popular with his 
rough school-fellows, who teased him, and dubbed 
him the " little parson," he entered a private 
Preparatory School. Here he remained three 
years, doing good work, especially in religious sub- 
jects, and making some intimate friends. In 1854 
he entered the Grammar School of Naumburg. 
The Doctor assures us that his hero " was the 
perfection of a well-mannered boy, and never did 
anything naughty." He early developed a taste 
for military games, the drama, and music. From 
his grandmother he heard reminiscences of Na- 
poleon, for whom, despite the hardships she suf- 
fered because of him, she preserved a great affec- 
tion. He took a deep interest in the Crimean 
War, repeating many of the movements of the 



90 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

armies with his leaden soldiers. Nietzsche gave 
a good account of himself in the Gymnasium or 
Grammar School, winning the praises of the In- 
spector. He was given a six-year scholarship in 
the famous Landes-Schule, Pforta, called by Mr. 
Kennedy the " German Eton." He was one of 
two hundred boys. The masters are said to have 
been able and kind. Much attention is said to 
have been paid to the character of the boys. Ath- 
letics had no part in the life of the school. To 
an English or American boy it would have looked 
like a case of all work and no play, with an ex- 
asperating amount of " verboten " and goose- 
stepping before and after the work. 

It was while at Pforta that the music of Richard 
Wagner came into Nietzsche's life for the first 
time, and completely captivated him. At one 
time he seriously thought of becoming a musician. 
While at Pforta one of his pastimes was to accom- 
pany on the piano the recital of the poems of 
Schiller by his most intimate friend Deussen, after- 
wards professor at Kief. Nietzsche himself com- 
posed many pieces, one at the age of fourteen, — 
some of them said to be charming, but of no last- 
ing merit. He founded a literary club in a ro- 
mantic manner at a romantic spot overlooking 
the beautiful valley of the Saale. His favorite 
authors at this time were Plato, JEschylus and the 
German lyric poet Holderlin, but he read with 
interest Tacitus, the Edda, the Niebelunger, 



IMPRESSIONS OF NIETZSCHE 91 

Shakespeare and Emerson. He was poor in both 
Mathematics and Natural Science, attained no 
skill in Gymnastics, was little better in Swim- 
ming, but was strong and brilliant in German and 
Latin. He received his first communion in 1861, 
and Deussen speaks of a feeling of rapture which 
all of them experienced at the time. His class 
reports speak of him as being excellent in Re- 
ligion. 

From Pforta Nietzsche went to the University 
of Bonn. Here he won the friendship of Ritschl 
(whom he followed to the University of Leipsic), 
who is said to have been a great factor in his 
intellectual life, and through whose strong influ- 
ence he was appointed Professor of Classical Phil- 
ology in the University of Bale at the youthful 
age of twenty-five. While at Bonn " the quiet 
student tried to transform himself into a beer- 
drinking, duel-fighting youth." Dr. Mugge would 
have us believe that these strange student carouses 
" have a healthy and elevating influence on the 
youth of Germany " ; that they " give their mem- 
bers a powerful education of a manly and national 
character " ; and he calls those who think differ- 
ently " calumniating philistines and pedants." 
He tells us that Nietzsche was of his opinion, and 
that for a time he attended the almost weekly ca- 
rouse. " But his interest in these social gather- 
ings slackened," the Doctor admits, " and shortly 
after leaving Bonn he lost all touch with his 



92 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

' Burschenschaft * . . . a daring step." This 
gives us an interesting peep into Dr. Mugge's 
mind. 

It was while a university student that Nietzsche 
wrote to his sister saying, " What we desire is 
truth, Truth only, even if it be something most 
frightful and most ugly." Later in life he quoted 
with approval Stendhal's dictum. " In order to 
be a good philosopher, it is necessary to be dry, 
clear without illusion." Possessing these quali- 
ties while yet a student (as he thought), he scru- 
tinized the faith of his childhood, detached its 
foibles and discarded it, still adhering, however, to 
Christian Ethics. About 1865 he fell completely 
under the spell of Schopenhauer, and sucked the 
black teats of Pessimism like an enfant terrible. 
Before going to Bale, having failed to get exemp- 
tion on account of near-sightedness, he fulfilled the 
obligation of one year's military service. He is 
said to have gotten on very well. We are told that 
he did not " cut a sorry figure " on a horse ; but 
while mounting his horse, a few months after he 
began his term of service, two pectoral muscles 
were torn, inflammation of the entire muscular and 
ligamental system of the upper part of the body set 
in, and his life was seriously endangered. Though 
incapacitated, he had to remain in Naumburg to 
the end of his year's service, when he left with a 
lieutenant's commission in the Landwehr. 

Nietzsche was at Bale for ten years. He made 



IMPRESSIONS OF NIETZSCHE 93 

a great impression by his youthful brilliance and 
by his ability to breathe the breath of life into the 
subject matter of his lectures. His resignation 
was based on ill health, but was undoubtedly due 
in part to the fact that his love for philosophy 
swallowed up his love for philology and to his 
growing impatience over the thought that as a 
professor at Bale he was a thoroughbred harnessed 
to a plow. 

Apart from his writings the more interesting 
occurrences connected with this period of his life 
are his service in the Franco-Prussian War, and 
his association with the Wagners. Nietzsche 
wished to defend the honor of Germany, but as he 
had become a Swiss citizen in order to accept his 
professorship, he could only go to the war as a 
hospital steward. This he did, but was soon 
stricken down with dysentery, which sent him first 
to the hospital, and then back to the university, 
and is supposed by some to have undermined his 
health permanently. 

Before this, however, Nietzsche had been re- 
ceived into the bosom of the Wagner family. 
Wagner's country house, known as Triebschen, 
was at the foot of Mt. Pilatus. His wife, Cosima, 
was the daughter of Liszt. Wagner called her 
the " unique one." Despite the disparity in their 
ages, Nietzsche and Wagner became devoted 
friends, and formed a mutual admiration society, 
into which Cosima was admitted, and from which 



94 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

Wagner's children seem not to have been excluded. 
Nietzsche spent the Christmas of 1869 and also of 
the following year at Triebschen. 

" These days were the great noontides of the 
friendship between Wagner and Nietzche," says 
Dr. Mugge. One is tempted to think that they 
were the late afternoontides, so quickly were they 
followed by a terrible twilight, if not a veritable 
Walpurgis' Night, brought on by Nietzsche. 

In 1874* Nietzsche avoided all visits to Wagner. 
The breach widens rapidly. In 1878 Nietzsche 
sends Wagner a copy of his " Human, All Too 
Human," in which he recants his expressed adora- 
tion of Wagner, whom he had called Jupiter, and 
Wagner sends him a copy of " Parsifal." The 
books cross in the mails. Neither acknowledges 
receipt of the other's gift. From this time on 
Nietzsche attacks his old friend, mercilessly annoy- 
ing him like a j ackal, digging up the bones of their 
intimate friendship and gnawing them like a hy- 
ena, pecking at his eyes and pulling at his vitals 
like a vulture. He follows up " Human, All Too 
Human " by " The Case of Wagner," and this 
by " Nietzsche contra Wagner." He compares 
Wagner's orchestration to the Sirocco. He writes 
to Spitteler : " It is quite natural that I connect 
my 6 conversion ' with Carmen. You will not 
doubt it a minute — simply one more malignity of 
mine. I know that the success of Carmen excited 
Wagner's wrath and envy." He calls Wagner a 
" shrewd rattlesnake," the " artist of decadence," 



IMPRESSIONS OF NIETZSCHE 95 

an " old thief " an " old magician" " this Cagli- 
ostro of modernity ! " He parodies and pokes ma- 
licious fun at his operas. He writes : w We now 
laugh at his appropriation of old legends and 
songs." He sputters : " I despise every one who 
does not regard Parsifal as an outrage on mor- 
als." 

Can Iago compete with it? Can Caliban beat 
it? The disciple Mugge tries to explain it on the 
ground of " the peculiar prevalence of instinct 
and sentiment in his friendships." The disciple 
Kennedy is betrayed into suggesting that the ex- 
planation of this " immoderate hatred," this 
" reckless hatred," (as Dr. Mugge is forced to 
call it), is to be found in this case, as in the case 
of Schopenhauer, in Nietzsche's " sexual feelings," 
which, he tells us, " were by no means normal." 
But can any explanation at all satisfactory to a 
balanced and unbiased mind be found except the 
explanation that the Nietzscheanites are forced 
to give for the silly note addressed by Nietzsche 
to the widow of the man he hounded to death, and 
over whose grave he frothed and snarled and 
yelped, his eyes in fiendish frenzy rolling — the 
note reading " Ariadne, I love you ! Dionysos," 
to-wit, that these were the acts of a madman? I 
do not know how this may strike a would-be philos- 
opher in a barrel squinting fiercely at human life 
through a fang-guarded bung-hole. But there 
cannot be the least doubt how it will strike any 
person to whom has been given that spirit " of 



96 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

power, and of love, and of a sound mind " of 
which Paul wrote to Timothy and of which a man 
like Dr. Arnold of Rugby was one of many fine ex- 
emplifications. 

Ten years elapsed between the time Nietzsche 
resigned his professorship in Bale and the " ter- 
rible moment " in January, 1889, when Overbeck 
found him in Turin " crouching in a corner of a 
sofa, reading what proved to be the last correc- 
tion of ' Nietzsche contra Wagner.' " Overbeck 
received several letters from Nietzsche that con- 
vinced him that his friend had entirely lost his 
identity. " He was not only a king, but the 
father of other kings." Overbeck went to the 
rescue. Describing his meeting with Nietzsche he 
writes : " He saw me, and recognizing who I was, 
rushed to me and embraced me passionately ; then, 
bursting into a flood of tears, he sank back upon 
the sofa in convulsions. I was also, through 
strong emotion, hardly able to stand upright. 
Did the abyss upon which he stood, or rather into 
which he had already fallen, disclose itself to him 
at that moment? At any rate, nothing of this 
sort was repeated." Further on in the letter 
from which I am quoting Overbeck says : " It 
appeared that, working himself up at the piano in 
loud songs and frenzies, he brought out fragments 
from the world of thought in which he last lived; 
at the same time short sentences uttered with an 
indescribably muffled tone, he babbled of sublime, 
wonderfully transcendental, and unspeakably hor- 



IMPRESSIONS OF NIETZSCHE 97 

rible things, regarding himself as the successor 
of the dead god, interspersing the whole with 
interludes on the piano. Thereupon followed once 
more convulsions and outbreaks of unutterable suf- 
fering." Recovering somewhat, he would speak 
often of himself as " the buffoon of the new eter- 
nities," and attempt to give expression to his rap- 
tures of delight " by means of fantastic dancing 
and leaping." To control him, says Overbeck, 
was a matter of child's play " as soon as one 
entered into his ideas of royal receptions and en- 
tries, festival music, and so on." That is, all one 
had to do to be completely en rapport with this ex- 
traordinary lunatic whom Dr. Mugge calls " the 
reformer of the world " was to get down and crawl 
into the barrel with the brilliant buffoon and 
squint at human life through a bung-hole ! 

Nietzsche wrote after leaving Bale, " What re- 
mains to me of life shall be spent in giving com- 
plete expression to that for which I still endure 
life." And what are regarded by his disciples as 
his most important contributions to philosophy 
were written during this last decade of his life in 
which he was suffered to go at large. He wan- 
dered about from place to place, utterly restless 
in body as in mind. Cain was hardly more of a 
vagabond when he went out from the presence of 
the Lord. At first he went to Naumburg to live 
with his mother. But she annoyed him, Dr. 
Mugge thinks, so he went from place to place. We 
hear of him at Venice, at Marienbad, back in 



98 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

Naumburg, at Lake Maggiore, in Genoa, in Nice, 
in Mentone, but most frequently at Sils-Maria in 
the Engadine, where he began to write his great- 
est work, " Thus Spake Zarathustra," and which 
place, we are told, is now the Mecca of Nietz- 
scheanites. 

A description of Nietzsche during the earlier 
part of this period by a friendly critic, Frau von 
B artels, is of interest. " Every day," she re- 
lates, " as we sat in the dining-room of the ' Os- 
teria ' (which was merely a little bit of roofed-in 
courtyard with a fan-light), a gentleman came to 
our table, who greeted us, and ordered his dinner 
in the Venetian dialect, but then sat mute. We 
took him for an Italian ; and we laughed at the 
oddity of his being at our table, seeking us out 
and yet never talking to us, and because he pre- 
sented such a singular appearance, with short, 
white linen trousers, black coat, extremely thick 
mustache, and sad brown eyes behind thick pol- 
ished glasses. But we did not laugh unkindly, for 
we liked him, and missed him whenever he was 
late. We laughed most of all at his hair. He 
wore it in a thick natural curl which formed a little 
acute angle on his forehead, and by a singular 
caprice he had cut off the extreme point of it. 
But next day it appeared to be growing again; 
on the day after, however, it would be cut off once 
more. We were so childish that even this made us 
laugh; and one day he also laughed with us, and 



IMPRESSIONS OF NIETZSCHE 99 

talked to us in our own language, and that was 
the beginning of our friendship." 

Nietzsche's income at this time was about four 
thousand francs a year, three thousand of which 
came as a pension from the University of Bale, 
and the balance from property. But he lived 
most abstemiously, oftentimes spending not ex- 
ceeding seventy-five francs per month. Some- 
times, however, when his mother sent him some- 
thing he liked, he would eat till he was sick. He 
was especially fond of honey in the comb, and 
would manage to eat up a large comb in three 
days. At times he would lie out on a solitary rock 
by the sea in the sun all day. Again he would 
climb to some high point overlooking one of the 
Swiss lakes and sing his own songs so loudly that 
people down on the lake could hear him. 

During this decade Nietzsche quarrelled with 
his sister who did more than any one else, perhaps, 
to cheer him up and encourage him. He objected 
to the man she proposed to marry and did marry, 
because he thought the man did not like him. He 
quarrelled with his publishers, and brought suit 
against them. He quarrelled with Miss Salome, 
who came to him as a devotee of his philosophy, 
the thing he was longing for. He quarrelled with 
his friends Ree and Rohde, and others. 

He quarrelled his friends away to such an ex- 
tent that when he had the fourth part of " Zara- 
thustra " printed he could only dispose of seven 



100 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

of the forty copies he had struck off. He quar- 
relled with just about everybody he came in real 
contact with who was not fool enough, or good 
natured enough, to get down and crawl into the 
barrel with him. Rohde accounted for his aliena- 
tion from Nietzsche on the ground of " manifold 
misunderstandings and the inability to follow 
Nietzsche's last evolutions." No doubt this was 
the case with many others. It is pathetic to hear 
him cry, " O Solitude, thou art my home ! " But 
it would be unfair to Solitude to give all of one's 
sympathy to Nietzsche. 

To " deblatterate " (the word is Stevenson's) 
about Nietzsche's love of mankind to one who 
knows anything of Nietzsche's life and writings is 
the quintessence of nonsense — at least to the 
world outside the Nietzschean barrel. 

And yet this is just exactly what your Nietz- 
scheanite does — foolishly, frantically, frothingly, 
everlastingly. Guff is their god, and Nietzsche is 
his fanatical, fin de siecle prophet. " O Guff, give 
us guff, that we may become creators of guff, and 
give guff to mankind world without end." So 
might a true Nietzscheanite sincerely pray. 

A true Christian, I take, is one who accepts 
Jesus Christ's estimate of Himself, and takes His 
teachings seriously. By a true Nietzscheanite I 
mean one who accepts Nietzsche's estimate of him- 
self, and takes his teachings seriously. It is per- 
haps only fair to Dr. Mugge to say that he often 
takes his Nietzsche cum grano sal, and then some. 



IMPRESSIONS OF NIETZSCHE 101 



II 

It is time for us to take a glance at the literary 
outpourings of Nietzsche. The limits of this 
paper forbid that we do more ; and it may not be 
amiss to say to the faint-hearted that it has limits 
— possibly far withdrawn, but still reachable by 
one who uses the faith and the food of an Elijah — 
it has limits, for I am not speaking in Congress 
on the abortive Ship Bill. 

Dr. Mugge, to whom we shall be mainly indebted 
for our glimpses into the works of Nietzsche, di- 
vides them into three distinct periods and a transi- 
tion period. Perhaps we cannot do better than 
follow him through the Nietzschean labyrinth. 
We may be quite certain that in doing so we will 
be in the hands of a friend — a friend of Nietz- 
sche; and that is the sort of guide we want. 

At the same time Dr. Mugge is not one of 
Nietzsche's totally purblind adorers. No doubt 
he places him upon a very high pedestal, if not 
the very highest upon which one born of woman 
ever stood. 

We have heard him speaking of his hero as 
" the reformer of the world." He certainly looks 
to Nietzsche to save the world from the " refining 
and yet deteriorating culture " of Socrates and 
Jesus Christ. 

" And now Nietzsche has come," he cries, ec- 
statically, with uplifted hands and expectant eyes, 



102 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

like some Haggai or Malachi or Zephaniah, at the 
end of his frank and interesting if somewhat too 
pretentious book on the Life and Work of Nietz- 
sche. He tells us that " Nietzsche will be, if only 
for a time, and for the few, the philosopher of the 
future." Woden says : " In these Valkyries' 
valiant virtue, viewed I a vent from impending 
doom." That the gospel of Nietzsche is this 
vent, Dr. Mugge seems to be quite convinced. 

And yet, in his Introduction, he says, " No 
doubt Nietzsche's works are full of faults and 
phantoms. No doubt, as far as method goes, he 
was not at all a philosopher. No one denies Nietz- 
sche the philologist's scholarly attainments and 
abilities ; but as a philosopher he had not the same 
respect for stern science, and he became a philo- 
sophical Herostratus. Perhaps, even, Nietzsche 
did not say anything that has not been said 
before. Most probably only a small portion of 
what Nietzsche has said will be of lasting value. 
His limitations, contradictions, and follies, his ab- 
solute lack of sound sociological ideas, of common 
sense, and last, but not least, of — humour, make 
many of his books wearisome." 

It is true that Dr. Mugge does not always 
please all of the Nietzscheanites. The ardent au- 
thor of " The Quintessence of Nietzsche," for in- 
stance, waxes righteously indignant when the 
Doctor says that Nietzsche's brain resembled a 
" prolate cycloid " ; and he spatters ink at him 
from the seat of the scornful, perhaps not with- 



IMPRESSIONS OF NIETZSCHE 103 

out some justification, when the Doctor indulges 
in the following " ultra-learned expressions " in 
describing Nietzsche's position in the realm of 
Metaphysics : " An optimistic Voluntarist, with 
a mystical Dionysean formula of stoical-teleologi- 
cal origin, — sometimes termed a Neo-Heracli- 
tean." 

Nevertheless I am persuaded that in Dr. Mugge 
we shall have as good a guide through the Nietz- 
schean labyrinth as it is possible for us to pro- 
cure. 

In the First (or Dionysean) Period, when 
Nietzsche was under the influence of Schopenhauer 
and Wagner, and was, according to Dr. Mugge, a 
pessimistic idealist, are placed " The Birth of 
Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music," and the four 
volumes of " Unseasonable Contemplations." The 
first of the " Contemplations " is a trenchant criti- 
cism of David Strauss, in which he is spoken of 
as an " upstart Philistine " who " waddles like a 
hippopotamus along the universal highway of the 
Future," and is then called " a poor inconsequent 
coward " because he lacked the courage to dis- 
card Christian Ethics, along with Christian The- 
ology, which the logic he made use of seemed to 
Nietzsche to require. The second of these " Con- 
templations " is an interesting essay on " The 
Utility and Harmfulness of History," which lays 
down the dictum, " Before all things a man ought 
to learn to live," reminding one of Emerson's 
essay on " Self Reliance." The third is on 



104 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

" Schopenhauer as Educator." In it we are told 
that " from his childhood every one should con- 
sider himself as the servant of this great idea, of 
this last aim of Nature, the production of the Man 
of Schopenhauer." Schopenhauer's hour for 
damnation had not yet come, but it came. No- 
body's damnation slumbered long before the judg- 
ment seat of Nietzsche. The volume is sugges- 
tive of Carlyle's " Heroes and Hero-Worship," 
especially when one comes across a sentence like 
this : " We must fight against everything which 
stands in the way of the creation of great men." 
Here we have an adumbration of Nietzsche's 
" Superman." The sub-title of the fourth " Com- 
templation " is " Richard Wagner in Bayreuth." 
It is the crescendo of Nietzsche's hymn of praise 
of the great composer begun in " The Birth of 
Tragedy." And this hymn of praise was sung, 
6e it remembered, although Nietzsche perceived 
that Love was the motive of all Wagner's works 
— this hymn of praise which was to be succeeded 
by chant after chant of hate, and last of all by 
that chant over which the crazed Nietzsche was 
gloating when Overbeck discovered him huddled 
in the corner of the sofa in Turin. 

In the Second Period Dr. Mugge places three 
books that were the first fruits of Nietzsche's 
emancipation from Schopenhauer and Wagner and 
his early Idealism. His style becomes aphoris- 
tic. These books are " Human, All-Too-Human," 
" Miscellaneous Opinions and Apothegms," and 



IMPRESSIONS OF NIETZSCHE 105 

" The Wanderer and his Shadow." The last two 
may be considered sequels of the first. The pre- 
vailing problem in Nietzsche's mind is the origin 
of morals. " We need a chemistry of all moral, 
religious, and esthetical conceptions and percep- 
tions," he tells us, " that we may discover their 
origin and constituents." " There are no eternal 
facts, no absolute truths." " All our valuations 
are precipitate." Apart from theology and its 
contentions, it is obvious that the world is neither 
" good " nor " bad." " The beast in us wishes to 
be deceived. Morality is a white lie, which saves 
us from being torn by that beast." " He is called 
' good ' who easily and willingly obeys the moral 
conventions, to whose true character he is quite in- 
different." " Pleasure is essentially neither good 
nor evil, and for the same reason wickedness is 
quite harmless. It is only consideration of the 
consequences — either from his neighbor, the 
State, or God — that induces man to abstain from 
evil." " Moral mankind will one day be replaced 
by a wise mankind." " One would soil one's in- 
tellectual conscience if one tried to approach 
Christianity in any shape. No religion has ever 
contained a truth. And between religion and 
science there is neither kinship, friendship, nor 
even enmity; they occupy different planes." 
" Christianity is now an empty husk without right 
to existence. It is recklessly immoderate, Asiatic, 
petty, and barbarous." " The most serious par- 
ody I ever heard was, ' In the beginning was non- 



106 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

sense, and the nonsense was with God, and the 
nonsense was God.' " " The prick of conscience 
is as foolish as the bite of a dog on a stone. 
Conscience is not the voice of God, but of other 
men in the heart of man." " Success sanctifies 
the motive." " Only he who has brains ought to 
possess property." " Socialism is not a problem 
of right but of power." " The future ideal mar- 
riage in which the wife will be the companion and 
friend in the highest sense, will probably necessitate 
the simultaneous institution of concubinage." 
" ' And forgive us our virtues ' : thus we ought to 
pray to our fellow-men." 

You may not like these apothegms. Here is a 
prophecy, buried in the midst of all this, that may 
be more to your liking: " In Europe, at least, 
the barriers between different nations will disap- 
pear more and more, and a new type of man will 
arise — the European." I could quote more ac- 
ceptable aphorisms than some of the above, for 
Nietzsche has already begun to give himself the 
lie, but those quoted represent the main current 
of his thoughts. Here is one, in parting, with a 
glimmer of humor in it, whether conscious or un- 
conscious : " Before marriage this question 
should be put : ' Will you continue to be satis- 
fied with this woman's conversation until old age? ' 
Everything else in marriage is transitory." 

Two books are placed in the Period of Transi- 
tion, "The Dawn of Day" and "The Gay 
Science." The Superman begins to loom up more 



IMPRESSIONS OF NIETZSCHE 107 

conspicuously above the horizon. " When our 
power becomes utterly shattered our rights cease ; 
and similarly, when our power becomes largely in- 
creased, the hitherto acknowledged rights of others 
cease for us." 

It is from Nietzsche, remind yourself just here, 
not the German Press of 1914—15, that I am quot- 
ing. 

" If, as one definition puts it, only those actions 
are moral which have been done solely for the sake 
of others — there are no moral actions ! If only 
those actions are moral — as another definition de- 
clares — which are done spontaneously, then again 
there are no moral actions ! What then are the 
actions that we call by this name? They are the 
results of intellectual blunders !" 

There is a passage in this book in which ex- 
pression " the sweet malice of silence " occurs that 
brings to my mind the pathetic picture Overbeck 
gives us of Nietzsche at the piano in Turin. 

It is followed by a fine passage like this : " The 
man with a nobly-framed intellect, who is at the 
same time endowed with the character, inclina- 
tions, and even experience, consonant with it, is a 
very rare but delightful being." Quick upon its 
heels comes a passage like this : " The submis- 
sions to morals may be either slavish, vain, self- 
interested, resigned, gloomily fantastic, thought- 
less, or despairing; but in itself it is not moral." 
Then we are told that " Neither necessity nor de- 
sire, but the love of power is the demon of man- 



108 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

kind ! " He returns to the assault upon Chris- 
tianity, describing its death-bed. He speaks of 
" divine cannibalism." He advises us to close our 
ears to the miseries of others. And then comes 
this Emersonian twang of the harp of life to 
which many an experience will vibrate : " We 
should do away with beggars, for we are sorry 
both when we do, and when we do not relieve 
them." You recall Emerson's " dirty dollar." 

" The Gay Science " begins with this declara- 
tion of independence of Schopenhauer : " No ! 
Life has not disappointed me ! On the contrary 
every year, from the day on which the great eman- 
cipation came to me, I find it richer, more de- 
sirable, more enigmatical — the thought that to 
the enlightened man life can be an experiment, 
and not a duty, not a destiny, not a deceit ! " 
This is followed by a statement that, were it true, 
would almost justify Nietzsche's career. " Up to 
the present time the greatest part of the advance- 
ment and progress of humanity has been effected 
by the strongest and most wicked minds. They 
arouse society when it becomes slack; they force 
men to fight for their opinions." 

That there is an element of truth in this, I 
will not deny. I see in Nietzsche a brain-spat- 
tered, blood-stained announcement, stuffed under 
our noses at the beginning of the twentieth 
century, that the Devil is not dead. Nietzsche 
is almost as stimulating, almost as arousing, 
as the Devil! Or rather his books are, for 



IMPRESSIONS OF NIETZSCHE 109 

the man Nietzsche was a poor chloral-cursed 
weakling, a pitiful slave everywhere outside his 
kingdom of Solitude. I would give the Devil his 
dues. I confess a debt to Nietzsche — for salu- 
tary ethical reactions. 

But let me by further quotations increase your 
debt to him. He tells us that " Morality is the 
herd-instinct in the individual." " To regard our 
European ethical system from a distance, to com- 
pare it with other systems past or future, a posi- 
tion outside ethics is necessary, a position beyond 
Good and Evil — at any rate, beyond our Good 
and Evil. We must try to get such a point of 
view. ... It is necessary to examine for once the 
inherent Value of ethics. The first step towards 
this is to call in question whether they have any 
inherent Value at all." Almost instantly Nietz- 
sche decides that our ethics have no value at all, 
and speaks scornfully of " the finery of moral 
mummery." Then, sputtering up through the hole 
whence flows the superfluity of Nietzschean 
naughtiness, comes this : " Corruption is only an 
abusive term for the autumn of a people. What 
does Life mean? It means the constant remov- 
ing from us of something that will die — it means 
that we should be cruel and inexorable towards 
all that grows feeble and old both in ourselves 
and in others ; it, therefore, means also, that we 
should be without reverence towards those who 
are dying, wretched or old! Always to be mur- 
derers ? Yet the ancient Moses has said : c Thou 



110 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

shalt not kill ' ! " " To me the Magnanimous One 
. . . appears as a man with the most powerful de- 
sire for revenge." He tells us (without quoting 
authority) that " God is dead." He follows this 
up with the assertion that " the astral arrange- 
ment in which we live is an exception," again with- 
out quoting authority. 

He tells us that " Sin is a Jewish invention " ; 
that " A Jesus Christ was only possible in a Jew- 
ish landscape." 

Then we are solemnly told that " To laugh 
means to be malicious." He asks : " What in 
the end are all men's truths ? " and quickly an- 
swers, " They are men's irrefutable errors." 

He would have us believe, on the strength of 
his " The mouth of Nietzsche hath spoken it," 
that crime never existed ; — which sounds like an 
unsought endorsement of " Mother Eddy." 

Then he sings the song, the chloral-choral, that 
is even now echoing in German universities and 
palaces, the mad song that grows ever louder, and 
for which Germany, betrayed by her captivated 
leaders, has sold her Christian birth-right : " I 
greet all the signs announcing that a more virile 
and more war-like era is beginning, which will 
again hold bravery in the highest honor ! . . . 
For believe me, the secret for gathering the fer- 
tilest harvest and the greatest enjoyment from ex- 
istence, is — to live dangerously! 1 . . . We chil- 

i Italics mine. I thank Nietzsche for this phrase. 



IMPRESSIONS OF NIETZSCHE 111 

dren of the future, how could we be at home in the 
present? We are antagonistic to all ideals which 
could make us feel at home in this frail, broken- 
down, transition period; and as regards the 
6 realities ' thereof, we do not believe in their dura- 
tion. The ice which still bears has become very 
thin; the warm wind is blowing; we ourselves, we 
homeless ones, are helping to break the ice. We 
preserve nothing, nor would we go back to any 
past age ; we are not at all ' liberal,' we do not 
labor for 8 progress,' we do not need first of all to 
close our ears to the market-place sirens of the 
future — their songs : ' equal rights,' ' free so- 
ciety,' ' no longer either lords or slaves,' do not 
allure us ! We do not by any means think it de- 
sirable that the kingdom of righteousness and 
peace should be established on earth (because un- 
der any circumstances it would be the kingdom of 
the profoundest mediocrity and Chinaism) ; we 
rejoice in everything which, like ourselves, loves 
danger, war, and adventure, which does not make 
compromises, not let itself be captured, conciliated, 
or defaced ; we count ourselves among the con- 
querors ; we ponder over the need of a new order 
of things, even of a new slavery ; for the strength- 
ening and elevation of the type * man ' always in- 
volves a new form of slavery . . . Weakness makes 
people gentle, ah, so gentle, so just, so inoffen- 
sive, so ' humane ' ! The ' religion of sympathy ' 
to which people would like to persuade us — yes, 
we know the hysterical mannikins and girls suffi- 



112 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

ciently well who need precisely this religion at 
present for a cloak and an adornment. We are 
no humanitarians ; we should not dare to speak of 
our ' love to mankind ' ; for that a person of our 
stamp is not enough of a stage-player. No, we 
do not love mankind." 

This, this is the " insane root " on which the 
Fausts of Germany fed before they sold their 
souls to the Devil. This is the food, mutatis mu- 
tandis, with which the poor Gretchens of Germany 
were stuffed before they laid their honor in the 
dust at the feet of the Krupp-crazed Kaiser Faust 
and his frenzied fellows and rose up in the sight 
of an astounded world, with their filthiness still 
disgustingly fresh in their skirts, to glory in their 
shame ! 

You may remember that Dr. Mugge proclaimed 
Nietzsche as " a lover of mankind." Well, there 
is nothing in heaven above, the earth beneath, or 
the dark places under the earth, that is not claimed 
for this extraordinary lunatic by one or the other 
of his deluded disciples. One had as well argue 
with the whole population of Bedlam as with these 
gentlemen. The best thing to do is to bring them 
to book. Demand that Nietzsche be placed in 
the witness-box to exhibit and speak for him- 
self; and once you have him there, force him to 
take off the " mask " that he is not ashamed to 
confess that he wears when he comes forth from 
his dark Solitude into the light of common day; 
if he hesitates, give him the tip that you know 



IMPRESSIONS OF NIETZSCHE 113 

he is Dionysos or some other divinity, and lead 
him by a string of nonsense to the piano. You 
will not be disappointed in your witness. He will 
foam out his own shame furiously. A sufficient 
answer unto Nietzscheanism is the real Nietzsche 
thereof. But candor compels me to testify that 
from time to time gusts of truth come through 
the Nietzsche bung-hole. 

We come now to the last period of Nietzsche's 
literary career ; what Dr. Mugge calls " the pe- 
riod of Nietzsche's own peculiar philosophy." 
Says the Doctor : " He gives up the idea of a 
rationalistic asceticism and begins to consider In- 
stinct as the motive power of development. This 
Instinct he first calls ' the Bent to Power ' and 
later ' the Will to Power.' Not only does he in- 
vestigate the origin of morals in general, but he 
tests also existing morals, and especially Christian 
morals, with regard to their effect on this instinct 
and on life. He tries to replace the present sys- 
tem of morals, as being contrary to all instinct, 
by a new and better system." 

The Doctor, who was residing in England when 
he wrote his book, and who was haunted by a 
shadow of English Commonsense that sometimes 
troubled the pool in which he saw with loving eyes 
the face of his master reflected, ends up his intro- 
ductory note to this period with this confession : 
" In the end he tends towards the overestimation 
of the facts of the case and the qualities of the 
instincts, and finally drifts into an ethical Nihil- 



114 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

ism." This is perhaps as near as one could expect 
a Nietzscheanite to come to placing the skull and 
cross bones on any Nietzschean concoction brewed 
before the dispatch of the notes to Cosima Wagner 
and Georg Brandes. One could hardly expect a 
Nietzscheanite, no matter how little above normal 
his temperfature might be, to cry, " There is death 
in the pot ! " For the love of Mike, let's be rea- 
sonable ! I say, for the love of Mike, because Mike 
and Nietzsche are about the only two left in the 
universe at this stage of the Nietzschean War 
against the World. God is dead. And Socrates 
and Plato and Jesus Christ and Richard Wagner 
and the rest have been tarred and feathered and 
drummed out of camp. Only Mike and Nietzsche 
are left. And Mike is left only because Nietz- 
sche has not seen him. Mike, being clothed with 
Humor, is invisible to Nietzsche. I say, For the 
love of Mike, let's be reasonable. Besides, we 
have no time to ask for further concessions from 
the disciples of " the reformer of the world." 

Let me bring this essay to a close with the 
briefest sort of a glimpse at Nietzsche's master- 
piece, " Thus Spake Zarathustra," with its sub- 
title, " A Book for All and None," and a mention, 
at least, of the suggestive names of the other books 
that belong to this so-called greatest period of 
Nietzsche's life. In the light of what has gone 
before we can see the light, by which I mean the 
darkness, for the light that is in it is darkness, 
without sitting up all night to watch the eclipse. 



IMPRESSIONS OF NIETZSCHE 115 

In this painful period there is little if anything 
brought out that is really new, even from the Nietz- 
schean viewpoint, unless it be the bubbling up 
through the sulphurous mud of this peripatetic 
poet-philosopher's volcanic mind of the oriental 
doctrine of eternal recurrence about which he 
dogmatizes with the same assurance, and with 
the same absence of authority, as he did about the 
death of God and the behavior of the remoter 
stellar systems. In this period it is true, in the 
main, that what humanity is furnished with is only 
more of the darkness of which samples have al- 
ready been given. The extraordinary lunatic only 
leaps and dances more frantically, only raves more 
brilliantly, more egotistically, more pantheistic- 
ally (in the Pan-German sense of the propagator 
being the whole thing), more impishly if not more 
diabolically. 

Despite his devil's-itch, Nietzsche never 
scratches himself deep enough to become a serious 
rival of Milton's Satan. At best he is a bookish 
devil. His bark is worse than his bite. Put him 
to the test, and he draws in his horns, puts his 
tail between his legs, and sneaks off to his lair in 
the Solitude. 

Nothing is more pathetic than the futile at- 
tempt of the Nietzscheanites to palm off Professor 
Nietzsche, their diseased and bunged-up idol, on 
the world as a stalwart physical giant who re- 
joiced to run his course. The wretched sham 
would be detected in Texas in five minutes, and 



116 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

ought not to deceive for long any man anywhere 
who knows aught of the glory of the human body. 
Nietzsche sometimes babbled about his career as 
a soldier. I wonder that he had the nerve to do 
this, even in the solitude of Germany. Had he 
done so anywhere in Texas, the Lone Star State 
would have shaken itself with laughter into a con- 
stellation of states when the word got about. 

Besides " Thus Spake Zarathustra," the books 
that belong to this last period before Nietzsche's 
total mental eclipse are the following: "Beyond 
Good and Evil," with its subtitle of " Prelude to a 
Philosophy of the Future " ; " The Genealogy of 
Morals " ; " The Case of Wagner " ; " Nietzsche 
contra Wagner " ; " The Twilight of the Idols " ; 
" The Antichrist " — an attempt at a criticism of 
Christianity, which was to be part one of a massive 
work to be called " The Will to Power." An au- 
tobiography entitled " Ecce Homo " was published 
after his death. 

It would be interesting, did time permit, to 
quote from these books, as I have done from the 
others. They are extremely quotable. But to do 
this would only be to pile Pelion on Ossa, and this 
is not a fair thing to do when Ossa rests on an 
empty stomach, and when a score of men, as full 
of matter as Job's friends, are waiting their turn 
to speak. If one began to quote from these books, 
one would find it hard not to quote at great 
length. And, as I have intimated, it is not really 
necessary to do this. We have already had a fair 



IMPRESSIONS OF NIETZSCHE 117 

glimpse at the remarkable contents of Nietzsche's 
mind. 

But I must quote the concluding paragraph of 
Mrs. Elizabeth Forster-Nietzsche's Introduction 
to " Thus Spake Zarathustra," for it is illuminat- 
ing. We shall see that the " Thus Spake Zara- 
thustra " of Nietzsche is the " Thus Spake the 
Lord " of the Bible. Nietzsche first antagonizes 
and routs all other teachers and prophets and 
Christs and Gods, and then takes the throne and 
reigns. 

" Already at the beginning of this history," 
says Mrs. Forster, " I hinted at the reasons which 
led my brother to select a Persian as the incarna- 
tion of his ideal of the majestic philosopher. His 
reasons, however, for choosing Zarathustra of 
all others to be his mouthpiece, he gives us in the 
following words : ' People have never asked me, 
as they should have done, what the name Zara- 
thustra precisely means in my mouth, in the mouth 
of the first Immoralist ; for what distinguishes that 
philosopher from all others in the past is the very 
fact that he was exactly the reverse of an im- 
moralist. Zarathustra was the first to see in the 
struggle between good and evil the essential wheel 
in the working of things. The translations of 
morality into the metaphysical, as force, cause, 
end in itself, was his work. But the very question 
suggests its own answer. Zarathustra created 
the most portentous error, morality, consequently 
he should also be the first to perceive that error, 



118 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

not only because he has had only and greater ex- 
perience of the subject than any other thinker — 
all history is the experimental refutation of the 
theory of the so-called moral order of things : — 
the more important point is that Zarathustra was 
more truthful than any other thinker. In his 
teaching alone do we meet with truthfulness up- 
held as the highest virtue — i.e., the reverse of 
the cowardice of the ' idealist ' who flees from 
reality. Zarathustra had more courage in his 
body than any other thinker before or after him. 
To tell the truth and to aim straight: that is the 
first Persian virtue. Am I understood? . . . 
The overcoming of morality through itself — 
through truthfulness, the overcoming of the mor- 
alist through his opposite — through me — that 
is what the name Zarathustra means in my 
mouth." 

You shall have several quotations from " Thus 
Spake Zarathustra " to end with : " And verily, 
ye good and just! In you there is much to be 
laughed at, and especially your fear of what hath 
hitherto been called 6 the devil ' ! 

" So alien are ye in your souls to what is great, 
that to you the Superman would be frightful in 
his goodness ! 

" And ye wise and knowing ones, ye would flee 
from the solar-glow of the wisdom in which the 
Superman joyfully batheth his nakedness! 

" Ye highest men who have come within my ken ! 
this is my doubt of you, and my secret laughter: 



IMPRESSIONS OF NIETZSCHE 119 

I suspect ye would call my Superman — a devil ! " 

When we realize that the overflowing German 
scourge of 1914 is the result, in no small measure, 
of the devotees of Nietzsche to carry out in actual 
practice Nietzschean doctrine as they understood 
it, perhaps this suspicion of " Zarathustra " is 
well-founded. 

" Yea ! I am Zarathustra, the godless ! . . . 
Thus spake Zarathustra." Who doubts it? Not 
Belgium ! Not France ! 

" Thus demandeth my great love to the remotest 
ones : be not considerate of thy neighbor! " 

" Surpass thyself even in thy neighbor: and a 
right which thou canst seize upon, shalt thou not 
allow to be given thee ! " 

" For I love blood." 



VI 

THE UNIVERSITY AND THE UNIVERSE 

An address delivered at St. Mary's Hall, Bur- 
lington, N. J., June 1st, 1915. 



THE UNIVERSITY AND THE UNIVERSE 

Your Rector is a lover of Poetry. I know it, 
because some twenty years or more ago, — a little 
before the time when your angels in heaven were 
whispering together and wondering how it was 
going to feel to be born and to live down in this 
world, — I sat at the feet of your Rector on a 
Tennessee Mountain — I had almost said the 
Mount of Transfiguration — to study Greek. I 
am afraid I did not learn much Greek. But you 
do not need to be told that was not your Rector's 
fault. Perhaps I am immune. When I was in the 
Philippine Islands, where they raise the most mag- 
nificent continuous crops of mosquitoes in the 
world, not even excepting New Jersey, I knew an 
Army Chaplain who was immune to mosquitoes. 
They never bit him. They never sent their bills 
into him — even on the first of the month. He 
hardly recognized their existence. I have a theory 
that I am linguistically immune; and this theory 
is very little if at all shaken by the fact that I 
have in my possession certain certificates that used 
to enable me to say to troublesome questioners, 

" Don't ask me ; I have passed that." Charles 

123 



1M PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

Lamb once said that he was sympathetically dis- 
posed to harmony, but organically incapable of a 
tune. I am like that about music, and I am al- 
most like that about languages. So it was not 
your Rector's fault that I did not learn much 
Greek. 

But I learned something from him that I prize 
more than the knowledge of Greek. I learned to 
love Poetry. I wonder if he remembers how he 
broke me in on " Lycidas," urging me to read it 
again and again, and good-naturedly refusing to 
take my opinion of the elegy until I had read it 
through five times, and how delighted he was when 
at last I showed signs that I was beginning to feel 
the surge of Milton's " Sounding Seas " and 
" whelming tide." I wonder if he remembers how 
he used to read and explain Browning to me in 
the little house just a stone's throw from Miss 
Sarah Barnwell Elliott's cottage? Anyway, I 
know your Rector loves Poetry. 

Now I wonder if you use Ward's English Poets ? 
We did at Sewanee, the University that crowns 
that glorified Mountain to which I referred a mo- 
ment ago. I hope you do. If you do, in the four- 
starred volume, in the brief biographical note un- 
der the name of Sydney Dobell, the name of Alex- 
ander Smith is mentioned. It is the only mention 
of him, I regret to say, in this excellent collection 
of English Poetry. " Poet he was not in the 
larger sense," perhaps, if we may apply his own 
words to himself. And yet he has said some things 



THE UNIVERSITY AND UNIVERSE 125 

that were well worth saying in language beautiful 
enough to be welcomed as a permanent fixture in 
the memory. For instance, he wrote : 

Books were his chiefest friends. In them he read 
Of those great spirits who went down like suns, 
And left upon the mountain-tops of Death 
A light that made them lovely. 

He also wrote the following lines, which furnish 
me with a reason, and almost the only reason I 
have for accepting the kind invitation to make this 
address : 

The saddest thing that can befall a soul 
Is when it loses faith in God and woman; 

Lost I those gems — 
Though the world's throne stood empty in my path 
I would go wandering back into my childhood, 
Searching for them with tears. 

I have ventured to come and speak to you to- 
day, not because I am fitted by my training to do 
so, but simply because of my abounding faith, my 
old-time boyish faith, my ever budding and bloom- 
ing and sweet-smelling faith, in God and woman. 
I pinned my faith to them in the beginning. To- 
day it would be impossible to count the number 
of pins by which my full-grown, untorn faith is 
pinned to them. I say this, although I hear the 
clamor. 

As of a new-world Babel, woman-built, 
And worse-confounded; 



126 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

although I see the inscription written over the 
gate of her " University " by command of the 
" Princess " : 

Let no man enter in on pain of death; 

and the ominous epitaph: 

Here lies a brother by a sister slain, 
All for the common good of womankind. 

My faith in woman, and in the God whose exquisite 
handiwork and hand-maiden she is, is too profound 
an experience to be shaken by the window-smash- 
ing, picture-slashing, teeth-gnashing furor of 
Feminism. I know. 

The woman's cause is man's : they rise or sink 
Together, dwarf 'd or godlike, bond or free ; 

and I know that the cause of both is the cause of 
Him who made them " like in difference." And 
no devil's advocate will ever persuade me to be- 
lieve that any other mood of the " Princess " than 
her final mood is her normal mood. 

I am going to speak to you about the univer- 
sity AND THE UNIVERSE. 

Some six years ago, on my way back to Amer- 
ica from the Philippines, I visited England. One 
of the most delightful features of the visit which 
teemed with interest was an evening spent with 
Sir Oliver Lodge in his home, " Mariemont," Edg- 
baston, a suburb of Birmingham. He was then, 



THE UNIVERSITY AND UNIVERSE 127 

as he still is, Principal of the University of Bir- 
mingham. He was, of course, the Well-Known, 
and I the Unknown, but he welcomed me with the 
comradery, with the fine spirit of good fellowship, 
between professor and student, that was one of 
the charming characteristics of my own Univer- 
sity, and ought to be of all universities. You 
know what a great name in the world of scholar- 
ship Sir Oliver Lodge's is, especially in the so- 
called scientific world. His capacious mind seems 
to be intelligently interested in every thing that 
is of human interest. He has written a book on 
" Modern Views of Electricity," another on " Elec- 
trons," another on " Life and Matter," another 
on " Signalling Without Wires," various books on 
Mathematics and Mechanics, a book on " School 
Teaching and School Reform," that every teacher 
ought to read, another on " The Substance of 
Faith Allied with Science," which he calls " A 
Catechism for Parents and Teachers," many ar- 
ticles on Psychic Research, and finally and of 
most interest to me, for I must not attempt to 
mention all of the contributions of his many-man- 
sioned Christ-illuminated mind to human enlight- 
enment, a book that appeared the winter I was in 
England published under the title of " Man and 
the Universe." It was the reading of this book, 
the sub-title of which is, " A Study of the Influ- 
ence of the Advance in Scientific Knowledge upon 
our Understanding of Christianity," that in- 
creased my desire to meet Sir Oliver to the " break- 



128 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

ing in " point. And it is the title and to some 
extent the contents of this remarkable book that 
suggested the subject of this address. 

By the Universe Sir Oliver Lodge means " the 
Maker of Heaven and Earth and of all things 
visible and invisible." In " The Higher Pan- 
theism " Tennyson, who thought in the light of 
the best science of his day, puts this question? 

The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills and 

the plains — 
Are not these, O Soul, the Vision of Him who reigns ? 
Is not the Vision He? 

This question Sir Oliver answers with a strong 
affirmative. The Vision is He. The Universe is 
God. The Universe is not dead. The Universe is 
a living and breathing, a thinking and a feeling 
Universe. His book might well be called " Man 
and his Relation to the God and Father of our 
Lord Jesus Christ." 

So when I speak of the University and the Uni- 
verse I mean the University and God, the Uni- 
versity and its Relation to the God and Father of 
our Lord Jesus Christ. 

I use the word University in the widest possible 
sense, including in it for the purposes of this ad- 
dress all institutions of learning whether of pri- 
mary or secondary rank. St. Mary's Hall, which 
has the first place in our thoughts and hearts 
to-day, is of course to be included. Indeed, it is 
to be double-starred in our consciousness. 



THE UNIVERSITY AND UNIVERSE 129 

What then is the relation of the University to 
the Universe? Before answering this question, 
let me suggest to you another way in which we 
may think of the Universe. But I must not make 
this suggestion until I have asked you not to 
let the intimation of the poet or the affirmation 
of the scientist slip from your mind. Lay hold on 
it! Fix it in your memory ! There is a great 
and true sense in which the Vision of the Uni- 
verse is God. Do let this thought vitalize and in- 
tellectualize and characterize and familiarize your 
Vision of the Universe. For the purposes of this 
address, however, it will be more edifying for us 
to think of the Vision of the Universe as, not ex- 
actly God Himself save in the sense in which the 
clothes are the man — but, the engodded garment 
of God. Not just the garment, mark you, but 
the garment in which God is now garbed, the gar- 
ment within which God actually is, and in which 
we can see Him move. 

Now we are ready for the answer to the ques- 
tion, What is the relation of the University to the 
Universe? The University is or ought to be to 
the Universe as the saline drop of ocean water is 
to the ocean. If the Universe is engodded, in- 
spirited, so ought the University to be. I put and 
answer a conundrum. When is a University not 
a University? When it is misrepresentative or 
unrepresentative of the engodded Universe. When 
it is Godless. When its God is an absentee God. 
When in response to the forlorn cry on the campus, 



130 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

"Alma Mater, Where is now thy God?" Echo 
answers, " Where? " and no other answer comes. 

We speak of a theist, meaning one who believes 
in God. We speak of an atheist, meaning one 
who does not believe in God. We speak of a Uni- 
versity, meaning an institution where the high- 
est truth concerning the Universe may be learned. 
Perhaps we shall one day come to speak of an 
^university, meaning thereby a pseudo-institution 
of learning where the real truth concerning the 
Universe may not be learned ; or, possibly, if the 
coinage of such a curious word be unwarranted, 
we may come to speak of such a baleful institution 
as a perversity, or even an adversity. For in- 
stance, instead of speaking of Girard College or 
University, we would speak of Girard's Perversity, 
or the Adversity of Gerard. 

A University not permeated and saturated with 
God, and illuminated and dominated by the pres- 
ence of God, is a human perversion of a divine 
institution. As the visible Universe without the 
Spirit of the Universe is not the real Universe 
but a mere shroud thrown over the remains of 
that which was once informed with life and in- 
telligence, so the University without so much of 
the Spirit of the Universe as naturally belongs to 
that portion of the Universe which a true Uni- 
versity is, is what Thomas Carlyle would call with 
fine contempt a Simulacrum, a Sham, — " with 
about the same relation to the eternal verities that 
an embroidered pillow-sham has to a real pillow. 



THE UNIVERSITY AND UNIVERSE 131 

As the drop of water is to the ocean from whence 
it came so should the University be to the Uni- 
verse — an infinitesimal but vital and faithfully 
representative part. 

There should be a " going " in the tops of the 
trees of a real University like that heard by David 
in the mulberry trees that would speak of the pres- 
ence of God. The very bushes on the campus of 
a real University ought to be able to speak as 
plainly of God as did the burning bush that Moses 
beheld on the remote mountain side. The flowers 
that grow in the soil of a real University ought to 
witness for God as did the flower of whose opening 
Linnaeus wrote, " I saw God in His glory passing 
by and bowed my head in worship." The stones 
should cry out of the walls of a real University, 
and the timber beams should answer them, in an- 
tiphonal testimony of the Spirit of Truth without 
whose presence no University can perform the 
true function of a real University. The lives of 
the members of the faculty of a real University 
ought to be epistles written with the finger of God, 
and so plainly written that even a freshman could 
read them. One ought to be able to say to each 
and every one of them, " We know that thou art a 
teacher come from God," and that the truth that 
thou teachest is not partial but universal truth," 
otherwise, your University campus is little better 
than a Valley of Dry Bones, and its buildings but 
whited sepulchres with the smell of death about 
them. 



132 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

If one were to ask, How much of God shall we 
have in our Universities, and how shall we have 
so much of Him as we ought to have? I would 
answer, first, That of course no University could 
contain Him all in all. Solomon knew that his 
Temple could not, and we know that not all the 
institutions of learning in the world, nor yet the 
world itself, could contain Him all in all. That, 
nothing less than the Universe could do. But I 
answer, secondly, That the great and gracious 
Spirit of the Universe has so expressed Himself 
that He can be apprehended by human thought 
and gotten into human institutions, — somewhat 
after the same manner — shall I say? — in which 
the mighty ocean expresses itself in the drop of 
ocean water. 

Now, apart from Poetry I do not believe we 
ever shall understand just what it was God did in 
that great act we call the Incarnation, so let me 
turn to Tennyson one of the teachers at whose feet 
I delight to sit, and seldom sit in vain, for an ex- 
pression concerning that act: 

Tho' truths in manhood darkly join, 
Deep-seated in our mystic frame, 
We yield all blessing to the name 

Of Him that made them current coin; 

For Wisdom dealt with mortal powers, 
Where truth in closest words shall fail, 
When truth embodied in a tale 

Shall enter in at lowly doors. 



THE UNIVERSITY AND UNIVERSE 133 

And so the Word had breath, and wrought 
With human hands the creed of creeds 
In loveliness of perfect deeds, 

More strong than all poetic thought; 

Which he may read that binds the sheaf, 
Or builds the house, or digs the grave, 
And those wild eyes that watch the wave 

In roarings round the coral reef. 



Beyond all teachers who ever taught, Jesus 
Christ is the Teacher come from God. He is the 
Word of God. Beyond all teachings His teach- 
ings are marked by the element of universality. 
They have the imprimation of the Universe upon 
them. The Truth as it is in Jesus is the Truth 
for the University because it is the Truth of the 
real Universe. He is, for the purposes of this 
world, the perfect Symbol of the Universe. To 
know Him is to love Him, and to know and love 
Him is a liberal education along universal lines. 
Mary, the sister of Martha, received a liberal edu- 
cation. It is written of her that she sat at Jesus' 
feet and heard His word. That was the first 
Christian College for Women. There was no bet- 
ter college in the world in her day, nor is there 
in our day, than the feet of Jesus Christ ; and His 
" Well done " is the most honorable degree ever 
conferred upon man or woman. One of the great 
merits of that College is its simplicity. There is 
but one course — but one thing is needful. If you 



134 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

choose that, and stick to it, you graduate with 
honor. 

In the main entrance to the great Johns Hop- 
kins Hospital in Baltimore there is an heroic 
figure of the Christ that beautifully dominates 
the hallway in which it stands. In Trinity 
Church, Boston, there is a Wonderful statue of 
Phillips Brooks done by St. Gaudens. The fig- 
ure of the great preacher in the act of preaching 
is itself striking, but a wealth of significance is 
added to this figure by that of the Christ which 
looms large just behind him and overshadows him. 
In every true University the Spirit of the Uni- 
verse as He has expressed Himself in Jesus Christ 
should be as visible to the eyes of the mind as the 
figure of the Christ in Johns Hopkins Hospital 
and that in Trinity Church are to the eyes of the 
body. He should overshadow and dominate every 
seat of learning with his charming grace, his all- 
embracing sympathy, his sweet reasonableness, his 
intellectual hospitality, his passion for social jus- 
tice and his unbounded and valiant love of the 
eternal universal Truth. 

How is this to come to pass? 

Just here let me put in another good word for 
Poetry. The function of Poetry in human life is 
immense. With Matthew Arnold I believe in- 
tensely that " The strongest part of our religion 
to-day is its unconscious poetry." Apart from 
Poetry, — by which I mean not merely the ex- 
pression but equally the feeling of the mystical or 



THE UNIVERSITY AND UNIVERSE 135 

romantic element in the life of the human spirit 
that spends a few brief years of its eternal life 
in these earthly bodies of ours, — I do not believe 
it is possible to understand Jesus Christ in His 
relation to the Universe. There is a sense which 
I am well-nigh hopeless of the salvation of prosy 
people. Christianity is not mere addition or sub- 
traction or multiplication or division. Christian- 
ity is a glorious Gift to the Human Imagination. 
The Birth and Life and Death and Resurrection 
and Ascension of Jesus Christ is a Divine Romance 
which only the mind of God could conceive or the 
hand of God write. I do not make little of the 
historical element of Christianity, but I would 
make much of the poetical or romantic element, 
because without this latter element Christianity 
will never do much more than help hobbled human- 
ity crawl along painfully toward the City of God. 
But under the spell of the poetry, the romance, 
the thrilling spiritual adventure, of the religion 
of Jesus, humanity will sometimes run, and some- 
times fly on eagles' wings, whither Christ has gone 
before. 

So I stand here to plead for the poetic, the ro- 
mantic, yes, let me say it, the child-like, element 
in human life as a thing that is absolutley indis- 
pensable for the right and joyful living of an 
aspiring and ascending human life, and therefore 
to the atmosphere of a real University. When 
the Master said, " Except ye become as little chil- 
dren ye shall in no case enter the kingdom of 



136 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

heaven," He spoke the wisdom of the ages in the 
terms of poetry. We almost never get anywhere 
worth being except as we are led on by the child 
in the heart of some man or woman, some boy or 
girl. There is a " little one " within the human 
heart that it is well-nigh unpardonable to offend. 
The injunction, " Do not sin against the child," 
applies not only to the child in the cradle or the 
child in the street but equally to the child in the 
heart. There is a bit of good philosophy in Bar- 
rie's " Peter Pan." It is possible to kill the fairies 
by disbelief, and there are fairies of the human 
mind that it is almost murder to kill or know- 
ingly to let die. We ought at all costs to keep 
alive the child-like in ourselves. Genius has been 
well described as the capacity for carrying the 
feelings of childhood up into the powers of man- 
hood. We sin against ourselves and society and 
God when we sin against the child-like in ourselves 
and others. You cannot keep Jesus Christ in a 
childless heart, or a childless University, or a child- 
less world, even if you succeed in getting Him in. 
He came forth from the presence of God where 
He ever beheld the faces of little children. Where 
the faces of little children are never seen He will 
not long abide. 

The other day a woman asked me what I 
thought became of all the interesting boys: there 
were so few interesting men, she said sadly. I 
will tell you what I think becomes of them. They 
nearly all die. They are nearly all murdered. 



THE UNIVERSITY AND UNIVERSE 137 

" Pity 'tis 'tis true." What I mean is that the 
poetic, the romantic, the idealistic, the heroic ele- 
ment that was characteristic of the boy, and ought 
to have been carried up from boyhood into man- 
hood, is despised or feared by the average stupid 
man, and is murdered by him as the young princes 
were murdered in the Tower. And ever after the 
man lives a life not much above the level for human 
interest of a lay figure in the show-window of a 
clothing-store or a wooden Indian before a to- 
bacco shop. 

The Youth, who daily farther from the east 
Must travel, still is Nature's Priest, 

And by the vision splendid 

Is on his way attended; 
At length the Man perceives it die away, 
And fade into the light of common day. 

The boy knows instinctively that " Power " dwells 
not in the light alone, especially light of common 
day but sometimes in " the darkness and the 
cloud." But this knowledge is oftentimes too 
high for the man. The boy knows that if he 
would hitch his chariot to a star he must not go 
to bed with the chickens, but must stay up after 
sundown and venture out into the dark, and toil 
upward in the night. But full grown, stuffed to 
stupidity with worldly affairs men often fail to 
attain or retain this knowledge. 

I suppose we shall never want to return to the 
days of the " dim religious light." We shall cer- 
tainly never want to return to the Dark Ages. 



138 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

But there is such a thing as having too much of 
even such a good thing as light. Every mother 
knows this. Every lover know this. Every artist 
knows this. Every student who burns the mid- 
night Mazda or Welsbach knows this. Every 
woman who puts on an evening gown knows this. 
If anybody has doubts on the subject the doubts 
can be instantly removed by entering a gallery 
where photographs are taken by glaring tubes 
of electric light and observing the hideous, ghastly 
look on the face of the person who sits for the 
picture. Excessive light is an angel or agent of 
darkness and ugliness and error. 

There has been just a little too much talk for 
the past generation or so about seeing facts in a 
" dry light," and we have played the patient fool 
too often and sat still and allowed ourselves to be 
stuffed to suffocation with such half-baked mental 
food. We are beginning to realize that there are 
facts of the first importance that will not reveal 
their secrets in a " dry light." We are beginning 
to understand that there is an appropriate light 
for every fact, whether the fact be a scientific fact 
like color, or a romantic fact like love, or a uni- 
versal Fact like Christ, and that the eternal sig- 
nificance of no fact can be seen save in the light 
ordained by God as the appropriate light for that 
fact. We have always known that we had to re- 
spect the fancy of a woman. Eve taught Adam 
that, in a jiffy, and the lesson has never been for- 
gotten. We are beginning to understand that 



THE UNIVERSITY AND UNIVERSE 139 

we must respect the fancy of a fact ; and that one 
fact may fancy a " dry light," and another fact 
may fancy a " wet light," a light saturated with 
tears, and another a " dark room " ; and that 
nothing is more unscientific or foolish than to 
attempt to dragoon all facts into a " dry light " 
and to force them to unbosom themselves without 
regard to their fancy. We are beginning to un- 
derstand that there are facts divinely beautiful 
and eternally true that can never be rightly seen 
or understood in any other than a " heavenly 
light " — the light that was never seen on land or 
sea or elsewhere but in the human soul. Imagine 
the brutal folly of dragging a woman into the " dry 
light " of a laboratory and trying to force her 
eyes to send out their love light to be observed by 
some pseudo-scientist who could " peep and botan- 
ize on his mother's grave " ! Imagine the brutal 
folly of dragging the Christ into the " dry light " 
of a laboratory and trying to analyze the light of 
the knowledge of the glory of God that suffuses 
His face! 

The outraged human spirit is beginning to be 
bold enough to say to all comers that that which 
robs Earth of Romance, and scoffs at loyalty to 
Ideals, and kills Beauty, and knows not God, is 
not, cannot be, the Truth; cannot be what men 
call Science, if Science indeed means the knowl- 
edge of the revealed or discovered Truth of the 
Universe. 
Now I have a deep feeling that Poetry, in the 



140 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

sense in which I am using the word, is coming to 
its own again; that a new Golden Age of Poetry 
is ahead of us. And I am profoundly persuaded 
that as we enter into this glorious age Jesus 
Christ will more and more enter into all our insti- 
tutions of learning, and manifest in them His Di- 
vine Wisdom and Power in a new and splendid 
way, re-establishing the right relation between the 
University and the Universe, making the Univer- 
sity a vital and eloquent witness to the whole 
truth of the whole Universe, and sending forth 
from the Universities into the world disciples 
aglow with His Universal ideals, equipped in heart 
and body and mind and soul to give adequate ex- 
pression to these ideals, and ready to perish if 
need be in the godlike task of levelling the high 
places of wrong-doing and entrenched privilege, 
of exalting and enlightening the low, dark places 
where for too long the unprivileged have been 
forced to exist, and of blazing a trail, and clearing 
a way, and building a highway, to the end that the 
kingdoms of this world may become the kingdom 
of our Lord and of His Christ. 

Behold, upon the mountain tops in yonder 
blushing East the beautiful feet of Him through 
whom this blessed consummation is to be brought 
to pass ! Behold, in St. Mary's Hall, hallowed 
anew every year with a hundred high and holy 
hopes of human girlhood, an alabaster box of 
precious ointment, full to the brim, and ready for 
the anointing of those beautiful and blessed feet ! 



VII 

LETTERS TO RADICALS 

To the Editor 

To Mr. Samuel Gompers 

To Mr. Charles Edward Russell 

To Mr. J. G. Phelps Stokes 

To Mr. John Spargo 



LETTERS TO RADICALS 

To the Editor: 

Permit me to record through the columns of 
your paper my profound personal protest against 
the harsh and hurried sentence of Patrick Quinlan 
to serve a term of two to seven years in the State 
penitentiary for his part in the Silk Workers' 
Strike. 

To hustle a man of the character of Patrick 
Quinlan off to prison, manacled to a burglar, to 
cause his hair to be clipped, and his finger prints 
to be taken, and his body to be clothed in the garb 
of a felon, is a piece of absolute injustice that 
rankles in my soul like a poisoned arrow, and of 
which I should think every enlightened citizen of 
New Jersey, even those resident in places where 
there has been a partial eclipse of justice, would 
be thoroughly ashamed. 

I do not say, I am not in a position to say, that 
Patrick Quinlan has been illegally degraded and 
stripped of his human rights. Of making many 
laws there is no end, and many of our laws are 
wonderfully and fearfully made by our hasty- 
pudding legislatures, and wonderfully and fear- 
fully and inequitably executed by our courts, 

which are nothing if not technical. Judging from 

143 



IU PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

recent happenings in Paterson, he must be indeed 
a cautious critic of his times who does not in some 
nice point offend some statutory " Thou shalt 
not." 

It may be, and probably is true, that Patrick 
Quinlan has so offended — that his legal technique 
is at fault — and that therefore his sentence to 
prison is not wanting in legality, and looks good 
to narrow judicial eyes, however far it may fall 
short of political wisdom and ordinary humanity. 

But though Patrick Quinlan may have so acted 
as to bring himself within the outreaching clutches 
of unsympathetic hands clothed with a little brief 
authority, I am strongly of the opinion that he 
is not the kind of man whose proper place in a 
civilized, not to say a Christian, community is the 
prison. I am strongly of the opinion that the 
presence of Patrick Quinlan in Trenton Prison is 
far more discreditable to all those who had a 
hand or voice in sending him there, and to all 
citizens of New Jersey who approve of the harsh 
sentence that keeps him there, than it is to Quin- 
lan himself. I am strongly of the opinion that 
the court that condemned Patrick Quinlan to serve 
a two years' sentence did an exceedingly bad day's 
work for the damaged reputation of our American 
judiciary. I am strongly of the opinion that if 
Patrick Quinlan, now dubbed Convict No. 2660, 
is forgotten, or his imprisonment regarded as a 
good riddance of one who " stirreth up the peo- 
ple," and he is left to serve out his term, to eat 



LETTERS TO RADICALS 145 

out his heart, caged behind iron bars, not only 
Paterson but the people of the whole State will 
have a severe penalty of an ethical if not a ma- 
terial character to pay ! Such unbrotherly, not 
to say inhuman, behavior would court a double 
penalty, and win it, perhaps, when the under dog 
of today has his day. 

I have watched the progress of the Silk Work- 
ers' Strike in Paterson with keen eyes from its 
inception. I have read the daily reports of it 
in the Newark News and the New York Times, 
the one with a human, the other with a capitalistic 
bias. I have read every thing about the strike 
I have been able to lay my hands on. I have been 
in Paterson twice since the beginning of the strike, 
and have talked with responsible citizens whose ac- 
tive sympathy was withheld from the strikers on 
account of the leadership of the strike (who as- 
sured me that the sympathy of the best people of 
Paterson would have been strongly with the strik- 
ers if they had had wiser leaders ) ; and I have also 
talked with those whose sympathy with the strik- 
ers knew no bounds. But I have neither seen nor 
read nor heard anything that would lead me to 
believe that Patrick Quinlan is a bad man or a 
dangerous man. The Rev. Percy S. Grant, Rec- 
tor of the Church of the Ascension, New York 
City, one of the best known and most highly 
respected clergymen of the Episcopal Church, 
came to Paterson during Quinlan's trial and tes- 
tified that he had known him for a number of 



146 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

years and believed him to be a good man and by 
no means an undesirable citizen. Whether it is 
possible by petty or gross persecution and con- 
tinued unfairness or injustice to make a bad and 
dangerous man out of Patrick Quinlan I do not 
know. I trust that it is not. At all events, I am 
confident that the attempt, conscious or uninten- 
tional has not as yet succeeded. 

That Patrick Quinlan is a man of hot blood, 
as Patrick Henry before him was, goes without 
saying. His veins are full of good red Irish 
blood. Such a man feels strongly and speaks 
strongly, in season and out of season. At the 
sight of unfairness and injustice his heart beats 
wildly, and sends the blood leaping and boiling to 
his brain. It is not only unreasonable, it is ab- 
surd, to expect such a man to choose and weigh 
his words when he stands on his feet, trembling 
with emotion, facing a great multitude of his fel- 
lows, whose wrongs have been wrought into the 
very fibres of his being. Such a man cannot but 
often speak unadvisedly with his lips. As the 
quality of his mercy to those he knows and loves 
is not strained, neither is the quality of his indict- 
ment of those through whose lack of mercy, as he 
sees it, his friends suffer. But there is no class 
of men to whom the world owes more. The saints 
themselves were neither clams nor cucumbers. 
Their hearts often grew hot within them and 
blazed forth in searing words. " God smite thee, 
thou whited wall," cried Paul in open court to his 



LETTERS TO RADICALS 147 

biased judges. Stephen denounced his judges to 
their very teeth as traitors and murderers. John 
and James would have called down fire from heaven 
to consume the Samaritan village that refused to 
receive their Master. One cannot but wonder 
what their fate would have been had it been in Pat- 
erson and not in this less panicky Samaritan 
village that their threatening speech was made. 

I confess that I wish Quinlan were a wiser man. 
I have small sympathy with the impossible eco- 
nomic vagaries of the movement with which for the 
time being he is identified. I trust that he will 
come to repentance and a better mind so far as his 
social program is concerned. He reminds me just 
a little of the big-hearted blind Irishman who, mis- 
taking the odor of a dead horse that was being 
hauled past his house for that of one of his un- 
fortunate fellow-beings, dropped in behind the 
wagon and followed it — to the boneyard ! But 
Quinlan belongs to the class of those who love the 
under dogs of our present unsatisfactory indus- 
trial system " not wisely but too well." I honor 
him for his warm and courageous heart. I wish 
he could be at the same time not less loving or less 
daring but more temperate. But intemperate as 
he may have been at indescribably trying mo- 
ments during this strike, I am strongly of the 
opinion that his temperateness, everything con- 
sidered, compares favorably with that of the serv- 
ants of the law in Paterson. The strike of which 
he has been one of the leaders, has been marked 



148 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

by moderation, not by excesses. As I look back 
upon it, the self-control of the strikers, under 
great provocation, seems marvellous and admir- 
able. This is certainly true so far as actions go, 
and actions speak louder than words to those fit 
to govern in a land where freedom of speech is 
cherished. " Saying it ain't doing it," said Tom 
Sawyer, and there is a world of wisdom in the say- 
ing that the Paterson authorities ought to take to 
heart. The greatest excess committed during the 
strike is the harsh sentence meted out to Patrick 
Quinlan. 

An English court, for an offense no less grave, 
sentenced John Burns to only six weeks' imprison- 
ment. On Bloody Sunday, November 13, 1887, 
during a period of frequent riots in England, a 
great meeting of the unemployed was held in Tra- 
falgar Square, although the holding of the meet- 
ing had been expressly prohibited. All London 
was alarmed. Both infantry and cavalry were 
called out to assist the police. Burns, the lead- 
ing spirit in the demonstration, defied the police 
and even broke through their lines. Of course he 
was arrested, but his punishment was not two 
years, but six weeks' imprisonment. The judge 
before whom he was brought had common sense 
enough to know that the fact that John Burns 
had taken a leading part in a hot-blooded pro- 
test against the conditions from which his fellows 
were suffering was no indication that he was a man 
of criminal instincts or tendencies and a menace 



LETTERS TO RADICALS 149 

to society. Since this incident John Burns has 
served many years with distinction on the London 
County Council, and now holds a responsible posi- 
tion under the British Government. 

It is a shameful sort of justice that has sent 
Patrick Quinlan to prison for a term of two to 
seven years. It seems all the more shameful when 
I recall that seven murderers walked out of Tren- 
ton Prison the day after Quinlan entered it, one 
cold-blooded murderer to return to the very 
county from which Quinlan was sent up. 

I am sure such things ought not to be. I am 
sure that Patrick Quinlan is not deserving of 
such unfair treatment. Do we not owe it to our- 
selves as well as to him to undo so far as possible 
the injustice of which he is the bound victim? I 
cannot believe that either Paterson or New Jersey 
means to rest in injustice. 

Mercer Green Johnston. 
July 25, 1913. 

University of the South, 
Sewanee, Tenn. 



615 Park Avenue, 
Baltimore, Md., 
March 8th, 1917. 
My dear Mr, Gompers: — 

By way of introduction, I venture to enclose a 
copy of some Resolutions presented to me on the 
eve of my departure from Newark by the Essex 
Trades Council, the engrossed copy of which, 
greatly prized, hangs in my study. 

I had hoped to meet you when you were in 
Baltimore during the A. F. of L. convention, and 
made several unsuccessful efforts to do so. I had 
the honor of sitting at table with your wife at the 
luncheon given by the Women's Trade Unionist 
League, at which I was one of the speakers. I am 
counting upon meeting you some day before long 
and talking over some of the matters of great 
import for the future of Labor, the Church, and 
the Nation. 

I am writing now to say how deeply interested 
I am in the Conference of the spokesmen of organ- 
izer Labor you have called for March 12th. I am 
glad you have called such a conference, and I like 
the tone of your Call as published in the papers. 

The activities of our friend Carl Beck, of the 
so-called Labor Forum of New York, more es- 
pecially in connection with the " Proclamation of 

150 



LETTERS TO RADICALS 151 

Working People " he has recently sent out broad- 
cast, have been a cause of some distress to me. It 
is my belief, — based partly upon the action of the 
Railway Men, saying they would do nothing to 
embarrass the Government at a critical time, and 
the spirit of your Call, — that this Proclamation 
does not fairly represent the mind of Organized 
Labor in America. Indeed, I think it grossly mis- 
represents the real spirit of the American Federa- 
tion of Labor, both in its attitude towards its own 
mission, and in its attitude towards the American 
Government. That document is tainted with Pac- 
ifism, and, I suspect, with Pro-Germanism, its twin 
brother at this moment of history. 

Now, as I understand it, the working philoso- 
phy of the American Federation of Labor is by no 
means pacifist. The Pacifist pules and whines, 
" Resist not evil." Organized Labor shouts in 
stentorian tones, " Resist the devil and he will flee 
from you." In my judgment the philosophy of 
the Pacifist will asphyxiate the Labor Movement 
if it is accepted. It will do worse. It will take 
the " guts " out of it. It will kill it dead. 

Then again, as I understand it, the American 
Federation of Labor is genuinely American. 
There is a serious question in the minds of some 
of us who call ourselves Socialists whether the 
Socialist Party is genuinely American. If it is 
not, so much the worse for the Socialist Party. 
It has sealed its doom here in America. I am 
myself strongly sympathetic towards sane Inter- 



152 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

nationalism. And when I use the word " interna- 
tionalism " I know what I am talking about. I 
have seen men of almost every nation face to face, 
and I have seen them, to a very large degree, on 
their own dung-hills. I look forward to, and 
pray and work for, the Brotherhood of Man, or, 
if our Socialist comrades prefer the name, the 
Commonwealth International. But I am per- 
fectly certain that bad Americanism is not and 
never will become good Internationalism. 

Men who are false to the Red, White and Blue, 
can never be trusted to be true to the Red. They 
will be then, as they are now, " fit for treasons, 
stratagems and spoils." They will constitute a 
sort of " yellow peril " under any flag, under any 
conceivable form of government. The honorable 
course, and the course which in the long run will 
win, is to entertain a high ideal for our Country ; 
to believe that our flag is the symbol of every hon- 
orable aspiration whether of Unionism or Social- 
ism — of real Justice, of real Liberty, of real 
Fraternity, of real Equality of Opportunity ; — 
and then to strive with might and main, with clean 
hands and hearts and undaunted spirit, out in the 
open in broad daylight, with faces unashamed, to 
make this high ideal an actuality. If we do this 
we will advance the cause of the Brotherhood of 
Man by making America fit to play an honorable 
part in the Family of Nations, the Commonwealth 
International. Why should not America march 
into the Commonwealth International under her 



LETTERS TO RADICALS 153 

own chosen Stars and Stripes, as a self-respecting 
and world- respected Nation? Unless this Com- 
monwealth International is composed of such na- 
tions, the day of its arrival will not be a Day of 
God ; it will be a Walpurgis Night. 

I trust that you and your associates who have 
at hand the great and worthy interests repre- 
sented by the American Federation of Labor will 
not budge an inch towards any action that at this 
critical moment in the life of our Nation would 
give just cause for suspicion as to whether the 
American Federation of Labor is genuinely Amer- 
ican at heart. To do so would be the fatalest 
kind of a blunder. It would set back your great 
cause a generation or longer. 

I know no such thought is in your mind; but I 
write thus earnestly because I know that the 
Devil, disguised as an angel of light and leading, 
is busy putting poison in the pot in which the pot- 
tage of wholesome democracy is being brewed — 
the kind of democracy that will stand the wear 
and tear of the ages. 

If at any time you think I can be of service 
to you and your cause, please call upon me. I 
shall be glad to do what I can. 

Yours fraternally, 

Mercee G. Johnston. 
Mr. Samuel Gompers, 

President American Federation of Labor, 
Washington, D. C. 



(Copy of Resolutions) 

essex trades council of newark, n. j., 
affiliated with a. f. of l. 

Whereas, the Reverend Mercer Green 
Johnston has repeatedly shown his interest in 
and friendship for those who labor and are heavy 
laden; and 

Whereas, His activities in behalf of the op- 
pressed, pursued in an unselfish disregard of his 
own personal interests, have greatly aided in light- 
ening the burdens of the underpaid and over- 
worked. Now therefore be it 

Resolved, That the Essex Trades Council, on 
behalf of itself and of its affiliated organizations, 
do now, on the eve of Mr. Johnston's departure 
from our city, express to him our sincere appre- 
ciation of his friendship and wish him Godspeed 
in his new field of labor ; and be it further 

Resolved, That these resolutions be spread 

upon the minutes of the Essex Trades Council, and 

that a suitably engrossed copy of them signed by 

the President and Secretary and sealed with the 

seal of the Council be presented to Mr. Johnston as 

a token of the esteem and honor in which we hold 

him. 

William J. Brennan, President. 

(seal) Henry F. Hilfers, Secretary. 

154 



March 15th, 1917. 
Mr. Charles Edward Russell, 
1025 Fifteenth Street, N. W., 
Washington, D. C. 

My dear Mr. Russell,: — I want to thank you 
for your two letters of February 7th and 13th 
published in the New York Times. I took much 
comfort from them. I am one of those Ameri- 
cans who have gradually come to the conviction 
that our present social system is working too much 
injustice to be endured much longer, and must 
therefore be radically altered. 

After a study of the question for upwards of 
twenty years, I came to the conclusion that the 
economic program of Socialism contained more 
of promise for a fair future for our Country in 
its length and breadth, and from the bottom to 
the top of our population, than any other before 
the world. 

At the close of a somewhat dramatic rectorship 
of Trinity Church, Newark, — the leading Episco- 
pal Church of the Diocese of Newark, officered by 
representatives of vested interests trebly en- 
trenched, — I announced myself, for the first time, 
as a Socialist. Before, I had spoken of myself 

as one with strong socialistic convictions, or as 

155 



156 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

one who believed profoundly in the social implica- 
tions and application of the Gospel. 

But I am an American. I am a root and 
branch American. I love the Flag of our Country 
passionately. To me it is a holy symbol. I 
never have tolerated, I never could bring myself 
to tolerate, wilful disrespect towards it. In the 
Philippines and here at home I have done every- 
thing in my power to inculcate love and respect 
for the Flag. I hate the cheap talk about the 
Flag being the mere symbol of the selfish interests 
of a certain class of our fellow-citizens. It is not 
the symbol of the Liquor interests because it 
floats above some saloon ; and it is not the symbol 
of Capitalistic interests because it floats in Wall 
Street. Thank God it does float in Wall Street, 
for I know that if Wall Street catches the vision, 
the clear full vision, of the Democratic Ideal of 
which the Stars and Stripes is the symbol, the 
wall of partition between the proverbial Wall 
Street man and the Just Man of Habakkuk who 
stands for brotherly justice for all men from the 
very top to the very bottom of society will be 
broken down. I could not for a moment admit 
that our Flag has been stolen and appropriated 
by any class of our citizens. To do so would be 
to bring the charge of treason home to my own 
door. For I would have been a common traitor 
to have stood by, and kept my head on my shoul- 
ders and my skin intact, while such hateful rob- 
bery was taking place. 



LETTERS TO RADICALS 157 

Now, the question is, what are we Americans 
who are convinced that there is great good in the 
economic program of Socialism for this whole 
land (for the rich as well as for the poor, for I 
know by the confessions of his Own mouth that the 
rich man needs to be saved from the insidious in- 
roads of excessive wealth upon human character 
as much as the poor man needs to be saved from 
the brutal effects of dire poverty), going to do in 
the face of the un-American (not to say anti- 
American) drift of Socialism in America? I take 
it for granted you read the article by A. M. 
Simons in the New Republic of December 2, 1916, 
reviewing the last campaign, called " The Future 
of the Socialist Party." If you have not read it, 
you ought to do so. You probably know Mr. 
Simons personally. I do not. He speaks of him- 
self as having been identified with the Socialist 
Movement for twenty years, and as having pinned 
his hope to it. He says that the Socialist candi- 
dates were largely men who " were hopelessly out 
of touch with all things American " ; that they 
were " utterly ignorant of the American mind," 
etc., etc. If there is substantial ground for the 
view set forth in this article — and I had already 
begun to fear the gathering of such clouds as he 
speaks of — it seems to me the future of Socialism 
in America is certain to be " bound in shallows 
and in miseries " ; as indeed it will richly deserve 
to be, so far as it is a party movement. 

We have just had a little out-cropping of the 



158 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

latent un-Americanism in the Socialist Movement 
here in Baltimore, followed by a rather vicious 
expose by The Evening Sun of the " dangerous 
teachings " of some of the local Socialist Clubs. 
My friend Miss Elisabeth Gilman has, I think 
written to you about the matter, enclosing a copy 
of the paper. We have been wondering whether 
anything could be done to save our comrades from 
the fate towards which some of them seem to be 
rushing; or, which is of even more importance, to 
save the essential ideals of Socialism from being 
dragged into a dark alley and clothed in a cos- 
tume and taught to speak a language that every 
decent American will loathe (as he ought to) and 
resolve to eradicate from American soil. 

Perhaps I ought to say I am not a party 
Socialist. I had about made up my mind to be- 
come one, when I was halted by Simons' article. 
That, taken in connection with my own recent 
observation brought me to the decision that I 
would postpone affiliating myself with the party 
movement until the dominant forces in the party 
were less irrational and more American. 

I have no fault to find with the international 
hopes and aspirations of Socialists. As a Chris- 
tian who takes the Founder of Christianity and 
His teachings about the Kingdom of God on 
Earth quite seriously, I have for a long time 
breathed freely in the atmosphere of internation- 
alism or universal brotherhood. But, for the love 
of Mike if not of America, I say, let's be reason- 



LETTERS TO RADICALS 159 

able. Bad Americanism cannot be or ever be- 
come good internationalism. Treason to the 
Stars and Stripes is not the sort of training to 
fit a man for loyalty to the Red Flag of world- 
wide brotherhood. The man who is careless of 
personal or national honor now is not the sort of 
man who will inspire trust in honorable men in 
any future state of society. 

This is a long letter from a stranger; but my 
heart is full to overflowing, and your letters in 
the Times have made me feel that we are not alto- 
gether strangers. I know how busy you must be, 
but if you can find time to send me any word, I 
shall appreciate it very much. That speech of 
Debs' in New York the other day has left me with 
a sickish feeling. 

Yours fraternally, 

Mercer G. Johnston. 

Mr. Charles Edward Russell, 
Washington, D. C. 



April 17th, 1917. 
My dear Mr, Stokes: — 

The Protest published in the New York Call of 
March 24th, 1917, about expresses my mind on 
the subject of the proper attitude of a Socialist 
toward the War, and you may use my name in 
connection with the circulation of the Protest if 
you so desire. 

I am sending a copy of the Protest to the 
Livmg Church, asking them to publish it in whole 
or in part. 

With kind regards, I am, 

Yours faithfully, 

Mercer G. Johnston. 

Mr. J. G. Phelps Stokes, 
88 Grove Street, 
New York City. 



16U 



Baltimore, Md., 
March 15th, 1917. 
My dear Mr. Spargo: — 

I suppose you read the article by A. M. Simons 
on " The Future of the Socialist Party " in The 
New Republic for December 2, 1916, in which he 
makes the charge that Socialism in America — 
at any rate, Party Socialism — has fallen into 
the hands of men " hopelessly out of touch with all 
things American " and " utterly ignorant of the 
American mind." 

The article made a strong impression upon me: 
so strong that it decided me not to become a party 
socialist, although I had recently said in a public 
speech that I thought socialists ought to unite 
with the party and that it was my intention to do 
so. In this article Simons " harped my fear 
aright," and this time the fear got the attention 
for which it has been clamoring. The fear is an 
old fear, based upon many observations : but as a 
result of hearing you at Sherwood Forest and of 
reading several of your books, I was beginning to 
feel that it was an unworthy fear. And now the 
last state of this socialist is almost worse than the 
first! at least so far as party socialism is con- 
cerned. 

161 



162 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

I am, as I always have been, an intense sort of 
an American. I still believe, as I have always be- 
lieved, that it is altogether possible to achieve the 
highest well-being of the people of this country 
under the Stars and Stripes and even under our 
present Constitution slightly amended. I see no 
antagonism between good Americanism and good 
Socialism. America is not committed to any 
special brand of economics. She would be just 
as much herself with the economics of Socialism 
as she would with those of Capitalism. I am 
pleased to think she would be more herself. 

At no time when I have thought of calling my- 
self a Socialist has it occurred to me that there 
would be any slightest conflict between my duty as 
a thoroughly loyal and patriotic American and 
my duty as a good Socialist. Although I have 
been thinking more or less socialistically for the 
past twenty years, I never called myself a plain 
Socialist until the latter part of the past year. 
When I decided to do so, if I had suspected that 
I could be justly accused of paring down my loy- 
alty to my country, right then and there I would 
have parted company with Socialism. 

I am not forgetful of the International phase 
of Socialism. I not only have no objection to 
that, so far as it is rational and sound-hearted, it 
strongly appeals to me as a Christian who takes 
Jesus Christ's idea of a Kingdom of God on earth 
quite seriously. But my brains and my heart tell 
me that the Kingdom of God on earth, or the In- 



LETTERS TO RADICALS 163 

ternational Commonwealth, will be built, not by 
men who are unappreciative of the best to be found 
in the national commonwealths that now are, and 
who, because of that failure, are ready to betray 
them, but by men who loyally do their best to 
exalt truth and justice and fraternity and liberty 
and private and public honor in the States of 
which they are actually citizens, and to which they 
are under obligations only less great than the obli- 
gations they will be under to the International 
Commonwealth after it becomes a reality. Unless 
the International Commonwealth is built by men 
of real honor, and upheld by such, the rottenness 
of the State of Denmark in the days of Hamlet 
will be a sweet-smelling savour compared with the 
rottenness of this world state. The man who does 
not know how to be loyal to the flag of the state of 
which he is now a citizen, will never be loyal to 
the flag of any far-off dream state save in his 
dreams. 

My international hope, as an American and a 
Socialist, is to see America enter the Federation 
of the World, the International Commonwealth, 
call it what you will, as a self-respecting and 
world-respected nation, this respect based upon 
the fact that she really loves her neighbors as 
herself, which she will do if we develop a standard 
American whose private and public and interna- 
tional life is dominated by the Golden Rule. 

I judge from the protest you sent to the Emer- 
gency Committee of the Socialist Party (I saw so 



164 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

much of it as was published in the New York 
Times), against so much of its proposed procla- 
mation as favored an embargo on food and war 
munitions that you have yourself been troubled by 
some of the doings of some of the influential party 
Socialists. In this case, it was not so much a 
question of its lack of Americanism as its excess 
of pro-Germanism. And yet, as matters have 
turned out, there is little or no difference between 
pro-Germanism and anti-Americanism. If mat- 
ters go a little farther in the direction in which 
they are now going, there will be little or no differ- 
ence between Pacifism and anti- Americanism. At 
this moment, when all that can be said in the 
name of religion and socialism has been said, 
Pacifism and pro-Germanism are Siamese Twins. 
I understand that your protest was successful. I 
am glad it was. But the fact the committee tried 
to put a thing like that over at this time goes far 
to justify the charge made by Simons in his 
article. 

You may have heard of the little flare-up of un- 
Americanism we have had here in Baltimore, the 
responsibility of which has been laid at the door 
of Socialism. In case you have not, I am en- 
closing a clipping from The Evening Sun of last 
Saturday containing an account, in rather vicious 
tone, of the result of a visit to some of the Social- 
ist Clubs and meetings. There has been more or 
less about the matter in the papers almost every 
day for the past week. Cochran published a let- 



LETTERS TO RADICALS 165 

ter — a " foolish letter " the editor called it — in 
which he came to the defence of the clubs with 
heat and heart but with scant wisdom. There is 
little room to doubt that we have here in Balti- 
more a certain amount of a brand of Socialism 
that is simply rotten, rotten with un-Americanism 
or pro-Germanism. And it is perfectly idle to 
try to ignore this. If Socialism is to succeed in 
the long run here in America, this rotten stuff has 
got to be cut out. It will not be tolerated. It 
ought not to be tolerated. 

It looks to me as if there were more asininity in 
American Socialism at this moment than in the 
Socialism of any other country. American So- 
cialism is up in the air. Sometimes it looks as if 
it were up in the air in a Zeppelin, bound for 
Berlin. 

If this war was to be stopped by Socialism, the 
time and place to stop it was 1914 in Germany. I 
do not blame the German Socialists for not stop- 
ping it. I do not believe they had the power to 
stop it. But since they did not stop it, but in- 
stead became part and parcel of the army that 
marched out of Germany to conquer the world, 
and to kill all who opposed them, Socialists just 
as much as anybody else, it is sheer stupidity for 
Socialists in lands threatened by this army to 
waste wind talking about the duty of a socialist 
not to go to war. As a matter of fact, the Ameri- 
can Socialists are doing most of the talking of this 
sort. One hears precious little of it from Belgian, 



166 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

English, French, Canadian, Australian, Russian 
or Italian socialists ; and now the socialists of 
Spain are demanding that their country take ac- 
tion against Germany. It is safe to say that 
nine-tenths of the talk of this sort one hears here 
is rank hot air. Let the war be brought to our 
very doors, and let our American socialists realize 
that they would fare just exactly like every one 
else at the hands of the invaders, and this sort of 
superficial spieling would promptly cease. 

All sensible men understand that it is one thing 
to take honorable action of every conceivable kind 
to prevent war, but quite another thing to stop a 
war once it has begun. So far as my reading of 
history goes no war was ever stopped by hot air. 

I have written you a long letter; but I am 
greatly troubled over the present trend of Ameri- 
can Socialism. I believe there is in the move- 
ment that goes by the name of Socialism a great 
blessing for humanity, and for that part of hu- 
manity we call America. But I am beginning to 
wonder whether American Socialism will not have 
to have a new birth before it comes to its own 
here in our land. If the present organized effort 
to set up Socialism in America gets thoroughly 
stamped with anti- Americanism or even un-Amer- 
icanism, its damnation is assured, and its doom 
cannot be escaped. 

I should be very glad to hear from you if you 
can take time to write. I know how busy you 



LETTERS TO RADICALS 167 

are, but I want to keep in touch with you. I rep- 
resent a body of thought in the country that you 
party Socialists must take note of if you ever 
expect to reach a worthy goal here in America. 
With cordial regards, I am, 

Yours fraternally, 

Mercer G. Johnston. 
Mr. John Spargo, 
Old Bennington, Vt. 



New York City, 
July 20, 1917. 
Mr. John Spargo, 

Old Bennington, Vt. 

My dear Spargo : — Your letter of May 31st, 
telling me of your severance from the Socialist 
party brought me just the news I wanted most to 
receive. 

I congratulate you with all my heart on the 
step you have taken and on the admirable state- 
ment of your reasons for taking this step. 

I have been trying to make time, in the midst of 
my preparations for a long absence in France, to 
write you fully about the matters of which you 
spoke in your letter and in the " proposals for a 
new party of progress," which came sometime 
later, but I find myself forced to do no more than 
send you this short letter, on the eve of my de- 
parture. However I want you to know of my 
deep interest in the step you have taken and in 
the proposals you make. Circumstances will 
make it impossible for me to join actively with 
you in this movement, so far as the immediate 
future is concerned. But as soon as I get back 
from France — supposing I do get back — I want 
to see you and confer with you with a view to 
throwing myself into this effort to present the 

great cause of Socialism to the American public 

168 



LETTERS TO RADICALS 169 

in a manner at once sanely American and Interna- 
tional. 

With cordial regards and with best wishes for 
you and your cause during my absence, I am 
Yours fraternally, 

Mercer G. Johnston. 



VIII 

THE AMERICAN SPIRIT 

An address delivered in Trinity Church, New- 
ark, October 18th, 1914, before the New Jersey 
Sons of the American Revolution. 



" Let us raise a standard to which the wise and 
honest can repair. The event is in the hand of God." 

— Washington. 

" Observe good faith and justice toward all na- 
tions; cultivate peace and harmony with all; religion 
and morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be that 
good policy does not equally enjoin it? It will be 
worthy of a free, enlightened, and, at no distant 
period, a great nation, to give to mankind the mag- 
nanimous and too novel example of a people always 
guided by an exalted justice and benevolence." — 
Washington. 

" The foundations of our national policy will be 
laid in the pure and immutable principles of private 
morality. . . . The propitious smiles of heaven can 
never be expected on a nation that disregards the 
eternal rules of order and right, which heaven itself 
has ordained." — Washington. 

" Overgrown military establishments . . . under 
any form of government are inauspicious to liberty." 

— Washington. 



172 



THE AMERICAN SPIRIT 

Shakespeare puts these fine words in the mouth 
of one of his characters in " Coriolanus " : 

I do love 
My country's good with a respect more tender, 
More holy and profound, than mine own life. 

I would not speak boastfully, especially in times 
like these when patriotism is being tried in the fire 
on so many bloody battlefields, but if I know the 
spirit within me that often makes my heart beat 
so wildly and sends the tears to my eyes when I be- 
hold with my mind's eye, and muse upon, my 
Country, I could make those words my very own 
without confusion of face or fear of it. Doubt- 
less there is a difference between religion and 
patriotism, but in my own case it would be difficult 
for me to define it. Oftentimes it would be im- 
possible for me to say whether the emotion that 
surges in my heart and sways me is religious or 
patriotic. Probably the correct analysis of such 
an emotion would show it to be the product of 
religion saturated with patriotism, or vice versa. 
It is a never-ending source of comfort to me to 
know that the " Strong Son of God " wept over 

Jerusalem. He is dearer to me by reason of those 

173 



174 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

tears and the heartbreaking words that followed 
them. No true patriot should miss the joy of 
knowing the Man Christ Jesus, who knew so well 
what was in a patriot's heart. 

Holding such sentiments, you gentlemen of the 
New Jersey Society of the Sons of the American 
Revolution will accept my words at their face 
value when I tell you that I am altogether glad 
to have your patriotic organization again within 
this building, whose walls once echoed to the drums 
and fifes of a band of men, our honored sires, 
whose hearts God touched, and into whose breasts 
He breathed the breath that gave this Nation a 
living soul. You are welcome here to-day, and 
you need have no fears of wearing your welcome 
out. When one crosses the threshold of a Span- 
iard one hears the hospitable greeting, " Est a es 
su casa, Senor — This is your house, Sir." As 
rector of this church I say, " This is your house, 
gentlemen." It certainly is, for it is your Heav- 
enly Father's house, and we have good authority 
for believing that in so far as we are His what is 
His is ours. He is ever ready to divide with us 
His living. Indeed, all that He has is ours. 

You have asked me to speak to you again. I 
thank you for the opportunity, for my heart is 
surcharged with thoughts that deeply concern the 
" general welfare " of this Nation ; this Nation 
" conceived in liberty " ; this Nation brought to the 
birth by the blood of the brains and broken bodies 
of those whose dear memories you seek to keep 



THE AMERICAN SPIRIT 175 

green ; this Nation established to " secure the 
blessings of liberty to ourselves and our poster- 
ity," and " dedicated to the proposition that all 
men are created equal." 

The beloved Dr. Arnold of Rugby, than whom 
the past century hardly produced a nobler ex- 
ample of a Christian and patriot, used to say to 
those who bade him hold his peace when at the 
sight of some wrong-doing the " fire burned " and 
his heart was hot within him, w I must speak or 
I will burst." I trust that I am not wanting in 
a " decent respect " for the opinions of my fellow- 
countrymen who by virtue of their offices, whether 
in State or Church, are charged with special re- 
sponsibility in times like these. I do not lightly 
set aside their expressed wishes. I have read and 
re-read the Thirty-ninth Psalm, beginning, " I 
said, I will take heed to my ways, that I sin not 
with my tongue : I will keep my mouth with a bridle 
while the wicked is before me." But over and 
over again I find myself in the perilous condition 
of Dr. Arnold: I must speak or I will burst. So 
far as what I have said, or shall say, concerning 
the things that are in the saddle and in the air and 
in the minds and hearts of men everywhere, needs 
apology, that confession must serve as such. If 
more need be said let it be this : That to me it 
seems as little praiseworthy for an American, who 
is the real thing, to be a " dumb dog " in 1914 
as it was to be a " dumb dog " in 1775 or 1861, 
let the consequences be what they may. It is alto- 



176 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

gether un-American to be afraid to speak aloud 
convictions upon which one, after deep delibera- 
tion, is ready to act irrevocably. It would be 
damnable treason to the highest hopes of America 
if the expectation of favors to come were in any 
degree responsible for this dumbness. 

We are met here to-day to remind ourselves 
that this is the one hundred and thirty-third anni- 
versary of the surrender at Yorktown of Lord 
Cornwallis, an Englishman, to General Washing- 
ton, an Englishman re-born an American six years 
before this event, and to think such thoughts as 
are suitable to such an occasion at such a time 
as this. 

Let me speak to you of the American Spirit. 
Whence came this Spirit? Who helped to bring 
it into being? Who were its enemies and who 
were its friends in the beginning? Just what is 
the significance of this Spirit? Who are its 
enemies and who are its friends now? What is 
the future of this Spirit ? What is the duty of its 
friends and lovers to-day? 

This Nation, said Abraham Lincoln, was " con- 
ceived in liberty." If it was, and a large part of 
mankind believes that it was, the American Spirit 
came forth from God. It was written by James, 
a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, 
that " Every good gift and every perfect gift is 
from above, and cometh down from the Father of 
lights." Surely if this Nation was conceived in 
liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all 



THE AMERICAN SPIRIT 177 

men are created equal, and exists to the end that 
" government of the people, by the people, and for 
the people, shall not perish from the earth," this 
Nation is a good gift to all mankind, and comes 
well within the meaning of St. James. 

It is not recorded that at the birth of the Amer- 
ican Spirit angels sang, " Peace on earth, good 
will to men " ; but it is a fact that at its concep- 
tion a great bell, on which was inscribed u Pro- 
claim liberty throughout all the land unto all the 
inhabitants thereof," was heard to ring, and that 
its joyful sound has been repeated not only 
throughout all this land but throughout all lands, 
and that the music of these bells brings to the 
minds of those who sit in darkness and the shadow 
of death the song that the angels sang when the 
Prince of Peace was born. 

Out of whose loins came this American Spirit? 
This is an American Question that every genuine 
American ought to be able to answer, and about 
which there should be no dissimulation. What 
answer shall we make ? 

Before setting down our answer, let me ask a 
few other questions that have a bearing upon this 
answer. In what man, far and away more than 
any other, did the American Spirit incarnate itself 
in the beginning, and make itself manifest not only 
in the American Colonies but throughout the 
whole world? There is only one answer. But for 
George Washington there would have been no 
American Nation. Well, what think you of 



178 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

Washington, whose son was he? Under what flag 
was he born? Under what flag did he live the 
first thirty-three years of his life? Under what 
flag did he serve gallantly prior to 1775? Surely 
no one would say that Washington was a son of 
France, or a son of Germany. Surely no one will 
deny that Washington was a son of England. In 
a very much more intimate sense than Paul was a 
Roman, Washington was an Englishman down to 
the day that the Declaration of Independence was 
signed, and he never ceased to be proud of the 
blood of his English ancestors that flowed in his 
veins. And this is a source of just pride, it may 
be said in passing, shared by every other American 
who has the right to it. It would seem that no 
man of intelligence could expect to win the head 
or the heart of America by " foaming out " songs 
of hate against England. 1 Let me go further 
and ask: Whose sons were the signers of the 
Declaration of Independence without a single ex- 
ception? Undoubtedly they were the sons of 
England until the moment they put their hands to 
that paper if not until after the acknowledgment 
of the independence of the Colonies by England 
seven years later. Practically every drop of 
blood in their veins was English blood. Let me 
go on and ask, Whose sons were the signers of 
the Constitution of the United States? To this 

iSee "A Chant of Hate Against England," by Ernst 
Lissauer, N. Y. Times, Oct. 15, 1914, republished from 
Jugend. 



THE AMERICAN SPIRIT 179 

question the same answer must be given. The 
signers of the Constitution only ceased to be Eng- 
lishmen when the} 7 wrested from their short-sighted 
English brethren the right to order their own 
affairs. 

Returning to our question, Out of whose loins 
came the American Spirit? is there any other 
answer to make than this : That the American 
Spirit, which came forth from God, which was 
" conceived in liberty," came out of the loins of 
England, the Mother of the English-speaking 
race? The Declaration of Independence is just 
as much the work of the sons of England as is 
Magna Charta. The War of the Revolution was 
just as much a war between brethren as any of the 
civil wars in England, or our own Civil War; 
and so far as incivility is concerned, there is little 
or no choice between any of them, and if there is 
the odds are not in favor of our own Civil War. 

In making this honest confession, which it would 
be good for the soul of every American to make, 
no claim is made for the immaculateness of the 
nation out of whose loins the American Spirit came. 
I am laboring under no delusions as to the short- 
comings or the overreachings of England, any 
more than I am laboring under such delusions as 
to America. England's history written by her 
own historians is an open book, and therein her 
faults are fearlessly set down. But with all her 
faults, with all her backslidings from the better 
way, there is one thing that cannot be denied her 



180 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

by those who are intelligent enough to read the 
English language, and honest enough to acknowl- 
edge what they find written in it, and that is that 
beyond all other nations, prior to the birth of this 
Nation, she was a well-spring of human liberty, 
and that it was through her that God gave birth 
to this Nation " conceived in liberty." If before 
that birth could take place it was necessary that 
a sword should pierce through her heart it was 
not the first time that the giving of a Divine gift 
to humanity was accompanied by such an expe- 
rience. 

In answering the question, Whence came the 
American Spirit? answer has already been made 
in part to the question, Who helped to bring this 
Spirit into being? But several things remain to 
be said. It is unquestionably true that the events 
which led up to the Revolution, and the Revolu- 
tion itself, which brought the American Spirit 
into being, were in the main what might be called 
family affairs of those who dwelt under the British 
flag and who spoke the English language. In the 
very document that declared America's independ- 
ence of England the expression " our British breth- 
ren " occurs, and no American who comprehends 
and cherishes the best American traditions and 
ideals is disturbed by the fraternal acknowledg- 
ment. Nevertheless the fact must not be lost sight 
of that Holland, France and Germany made minor 
contributions to the population of the British 
Colonies which afterwards became the Thirteen 



THE AMERICAN SPIRIT 181 

American States, and that these elements, before 
they were entirely Anglicized, helped measurably 
to bring the American Spirit into being, and be- 
came a part of the real American people. But 
such help as they rendered was of a comparatively 
humble sort. Philip Schuyler, of Dutch descent, 
is the only man not of English descent 1 among 
the Colonists who took anything like an important 
part in the Revolution. Out of the very loins of 
England came the strong men who led in the re- 
sistance to the encroachment upon their rights as 
Englishmen that resulted in the birth of this Na- 
tion. The two leading Colonies in this bold busi- 
ness were Virginia and Massachusetts and a glance 
at the map will show what a firm hold on the hearts 
of the people of these Colonies England had. The 
names of the counties and rivers and older cities 
and towns are English to the last degree. York- 
town, on the York River, York County, Virginia, 
is a fair sample. Essex, Middlesex, Norfolk, 
Plymouth, Bristol, Worcester, Hampshire, Hamp- 
den and Berkshire — so run the names of the coun- 
ties of Massachusetts. 2 The first Americans were 

i The speaker is of Scotch-Irish descent. His paternal 
ancestor came to America from Scotland about 1727. It 
need hardly be said that the words England and English 
are not used in an exclusive sense, but include at least all 
of Great Britain. 

2 In the list of the 100 largest American cities the only 
names that appear are English, Indian, French and Spanish. 
The only exceptions seem to be such names as Philadelphia, 
Memphis, Troy, etc., for which Americans of English de- 
scent are responsible, and Schenectady, named by Ameri- 
cans of Dutch descent. 



182 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

all British by birth or by adoption. The Dutch, 
the French, the Germans in America were all Brit- 
ish, and contentedly so, before they were Ameri- 
cans. 

Who were the enemies, and who were the friends 
of the American Spirit in the beginning? The 
Declaration of Independence was leveled at the 
head of George III, of the House of Hanover, 
King of Great Britain and Ireland, and rightly 
so. " A Prince, whose character is thus marked 
by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit 
to be the ruler of a free People." Thus ran the 
Declaration, and I would not alter a word of it. 
I am not in the least disposed to defend this thick- 
skulled King whose great-grandfather England 
had imported from Germany, nor those dull sub- 
jects of his who never could understand the view- 
point of their brethren over the sea. The Eng- 
land of George III thoroughly deserved what she 
got, and I yield to no man in honoring the men 
who meted out the well-earned punishment to her. 
As a boy I reveled in the slaughter of Red Coats, 
and I have never repented of the " bluggy " joy. 
I am afraid that I was not as thankful as a Chris- 
tian should have been when I discovered a few 
days ago that only 156 Red Coats were killed 
and 326 wounded in the Battle of Yorktown! 
But it is only fair to say that compared with his 
contemporary Frederick the Great, of whom the 
Prussians are very proud, George III was an ex- 
ceedingly mild-flavored and! domesticated sort of 



THE AMERICAN SPIRIT 183 

a tyrant. Had the American Colonists, in an evil 
hour, appealed to Frederick for help, and had 
he responded to their appeal (for other than al- 
truistic motives), and then decided to stay and 
rule over them, as he certainly would have done, 
the Colonists would have pined for the good old 
days of King George as the Israelites pined for 
the flesh-pots of Egypt. If the world had been 
searched in the year 1776 for the ruler least in sym- 
pathy with the American Spirit it would have been 
difficult to find one who would have met the require- 
ments more perfectly than this Frederick of the 
House of Hohenzollern whose ministers were mere 
clerks to give effect to his absolute will, and whose 
political theories were all pinned together with 
swords and bayonets. 

While the majority of insular Englishmen sup- 
ported King George in his overbearing attitude 
toward the Colonies, we must not forget that Lon- 
don never approved of it, that London plead for 
America, and that Chatham (called " that trumpet 
of sedition " by the King) and Fox and Burke and 
Pitt and Shelburne lifted up their voices in favor 
of the Colonies, and finally carried the British 
public with them; nor must we forget that it is 
recorded of Washington, in England's most popu- 
lar history, that " No nobler figure ever stood 
in the forefront of a nation's life," 1 and that alto- 
gether the most intelligent and most popular ap- 
preciation of our Country ever written is the late 

i Green's History of the English People Vol. IV, p. 254. 



184 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

Ambassador Bryce's " American Commonwealth." 
And it is well to remind ourselves that the cause 
of Independence was not overwhelmingly popular 
even among the Colonists themselves. We used 
to be taught in school that the Spirit of '76 was 
so permeating and contagious that practically 
everybody in America caught it. We know now 
that many escaped it, and that the struggle for 
Independence was never supported by anything 
like all of the Colonists, and for a good part of 
the time was supported by perhaps a minority of 
them. 

The great friends of the American Spirit in 
early days were the French. But for France that 
Spirit would have been stamped out, and the cause 
of liberty in the world set back a hundred years. 
The debt that we Americans, and all true lovers 
of liberty, owe to France is incalculable. I know 
that mixed motives brought France to America's 
help, but in the person of LaFayette she rose to 
her highest and came to us in our dire distress, 
and dared to the uttermost in our behalf; and 
from the day of his coming to the end of the war 
America never looked to France in vain. The 
debt we owe France has never been paid. The 
passing of LaFayette and the rise of Napoleon 
is partly responsible for this. But now that 
France is again at Freedom's side, if in some hour 
of crushing disaster she turned her eyes towards 
us and said, " Help me, or I perish," and we 
turned a deaf ear to her — supposing her cause 



THE AMERICAN SPIRIT 185 

to be just — I would be ashamed ever again to 
set foot on French soil. It is devil's doctrine, no 
matter what pretentious claims to culture its 
preachers may make, that salvation for a nation 
lies in taking all and giving nothing. That which 
is damnation for the individual can never be sal- 
vation for the State in a moral universe. 

But what, you may be thinking, of the German 
element in the War of Independence? Of course, 
in the main, it was very strongly against America. 
Hardly a word of sympathy, except from the great 
Kant, who " embraced the cause of the American 
colonists with all the energy of his vast intellect," 
came from Germany. Klopstock and Lessing said 
a few favorable things. And Steuben and De- 
Kalb, of honored memory, came to us, not because 
of any friendship on their part or the part of 
their countries for the cause of Independence, but 
through the persuasion of some of our good French 
friends. But they came, and did splendid service, 
and every true American honors their names. 
Steuben was at Yorktown with LaFayette and 
Washington, and happened to be in command when 
Cornwallis decided to surrender. DeKalb was 
killed at Camden, South Carolina, under the most 
heroic circumstances. No doubt some of the Ger- 
man colonists of Pennsylvania served in the rank 
and file of the Continental Army. So far as I 
know none distinguished themselves. John Peter 
Gabriel Muhlenberg, Trappe, Pa., became a 
major-general by brevet. His father, Henry M., 



186 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

was patriotic. The former raised the 8th Va. 
(German) regiment, of which he became Colonel, 
at Woodstock, Va. Greene, in " The German Ele- 
ment in the War of Independence," does not speak 
of them. This is the bright side of the picture. 
The dark side is that first and last Germany fur- 
nished about thirty thousand mercenaries to en- 
able George III to crush the American Spirit. 
The large majority of these German mercenaries 
came from Hesse-Cassel and Hesse-Hanau, but 
Brunswick, Waldeck, Anspach and Anhalt-Zerbst 
also had a hand in this shameful business of fur- 
nishing hirelings to do battle against the Ameri- 
can Spirit. 

We come now to the consideration of the ques- 
tion, Just what is the significance of the American 
Spirit ? Already this question has been partly an- 
swered. Indeed, it is quite impossible to speak of 
this Spirit without disclosing somewhat of its 
meaning. But something must be added to what 
has been said. 

In his book on " The Spirit of America," Dr. 
Henry Van Dyke, a real American of Dutch de- 
scent, now ambassador to Holland, says : " This 
republic continues to exist and develop along the 
normal lines of its own nature, because it is still 
animated and controlled by the same Spirit of 
America which brought it into being to embody 
the soul of the people." He then goes on to say : 
" I am quite sure that there are few, even among 
Americans, who appreciate the literal truth and 



THE AMERICAN SPIRIT 187 

the full meaning of this last statement. It is com- 
mon to assume that the Spirit of 1776 is an affair 
of the past ; that the native American stock is 
swallowed up and lost in our mixed population ; 
and that the new United States, beginning, let us 
say, at the close of the Civil War, is now controlled 
and guided by forces which have come to it from 
without. This is not true even physically, much 
less is it true intellectually and morally. The 
blended strains of blood which made the American 
people in the beginning are still the dominant fac- 
tors in the American people of to-day. . . . The 
native stock has led and still leads America." * 
To substantiate this statement he calls attention 
to the fact that 86 per cent, of the 16,395 persons 
included in " Who's Who in America " are native 
Americans, and that of the men elected to the 
presidency of the United States there has been 
only one whose ancestors did not belong to Amer- 
ica before the Revolution — James Buchanan, a 
Scotch-Irishman, whose father came in 1783 — 
and all of the presidents except four trace their 
line back to Americans of the seventeenth century. 
It is noteworthy in this connection that all of our 
presidents except Van Buren and Roosevelt are of 
English descent, and the same would seem to hold 
to an equal degree in the case of our vice-presi- 
dents. 

What Dr. Van Dyke says is plainly true, and 

i Ten of twenty-seven presidents have come from Virginia 
and Massachusetts. 



188 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

any newcomers who act upon a contrary theory are 
riding to an unhappy fall. If they are wise in 
their generation they will not attempt to remove 
the ancient landmarks of this Nation, or drag 
its anchors to other moorings, or choke the well- 
springs of American liberty, or obstruct the well- 
worn channels through which American feeling 
flows. That were to woo the whirlwind and to 
court the lightning. America is for Americans — 
real, unqualified Americans. 1 The Americans who 
built this Nation upon ideals of their own choos- 
ing, and who from the beginning have rightly domi- 
nated it, and rightly dominate it now, have as little 
intention of allowing newcomers to substitute for 
the ancient American ideals new and strange ideals 
that have come newly up as they had of permitting 
the American Union to be rent in twain. This 
ought to be plain enough to any one who knows 
even a little of the history of the English-speaking 
race to recall even a quondam Columbia professor, 
or a recently imported Harvard professor, or even 
a German professor at large, from the error of. 
his way. Of course, this is not a pleasant fact 
to make mention of; but it is a fact, a flint-like 
fact, and it is foolish to blink it. " Lord Bacon 

i " Citizens, by birth or choice, of a common country, that 
country has a right to concentrate your affections." — Wash- 
ington — Farewell Address. 

The Kaiser is reported to have said to a so-called " Ger- 
man-American " : "I know what a German is, and I know 
what an American is. I do not know what a German- 
American is." 



THE AMERICAN SPIRIT 189 

has told me that a great question would not fail 
of being agitated at one time or another," de- 
clared Chatham. It is a vital American fact, and 
no amount of bombast, and no amount of bragga- 
docio, and no amount of bamboozling, and no 
amount of button-holing, or bartering, or bulldoz- 
ing, from either side of the Atlantic, from court or 
camp, from chamber or campus, can alter this un- 
compromising fact whose roots are buried deep in 
the brains and hearts of those who speak, because 
they love it and what it stands for best, the tongue 
of Wyclif and Knox and More, Shakespeare and 
Milton, Hampden and Eliot and Pym, Blackstone 
and Marshall, and Washington, Jefferson, Web- 
ster and Lincoln. 

I am sorry to have to say this. But the bla- 
tancy of those among us who bear the name of 
American without really believing in the vital thing 
for which the name stands, makes it impossible 
for me to be silent. Let those whom the cap fits 
put it on : I only refer to those of whom what I say 
is really true. 

For what, further, does the American Spirit 
stand? What says the Declaration? Among 
other things it speaks of '* a decent respect to the 
opinions of mankind." It speaks of this Nation's 
right to a " separate and equal station " in the 
family of nations. It says nothing of this Na- 
tion's right to a " place in the sun " — or the lime- 
light. The American Spirit holds no commission 
from God to spread American Ideals in either hem- 



190 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

isphere with the sword, and it would regard as an 
intolerable nuisance to be abated any nation that 
claimed such a commission to so spread its ideals 
or " culture." It speaks of national rectitude, 
and a people's sacred honor. The American 
Spirit wastes no affection on the ambitious Bona- 
parte, but it abhors the inexcusable treachery he 
experienced thrice at the hands of those who called 
themselves his allies and went forth to battle with 
him ; and it does not look unmoved upon the " deep 
damnation " of Belgium's " taking off." The 
Declaration speaks with indignation of those who 
attempt to render " the military independent of 
and superior to the Civil Power," and the Amer- 
ican Spirit recognizes, neither within its own bor- 
ders nor beyond them, the brutal doctrine that 
Might makes Right. 1 It dismisses forever from 
the seat of its affections kings and emperors and 
such. It puts no trust in princes — even those 
" O. K'd " by ° exchange professors," and it is 
very suspicious of any man calling himself an 
American who does, especially if he has been feed- 
ing upon royal dainties. The American Constitu- 
tion begins, " We, the people," and there is not a 
more glorious phrase in the literature of politics. 
The American Spirit knows that it will be the be- 
ginning of the tragic end when those great words, 
bought at a great price, cease to mean the great 
thing they meant to the founders of this Nation. 

iThe "Macht Politik" of Treitschke, the Kaiser, the 
Crown Prince, Bernhardi et al. 



THE AMERICAN SPIRIT 191 

I must now hasten to a close. Need I stop to 
answer the question, Who are the enemies, and who 
are the friends, of the American Spirit to-day? 
Those at home must answer for themselves. Some 
have already answered, and are under suspicion — 
suspicion, shall I say, of not having understood 
just what they were about when they took out 
their papers? Now is the time for them to con- 
sider. I trust that they may decide to become 
real Americans and remain. But if they find that 
they really prefer the government of an " irre- 
sponsible," irremovable autocrat to the govern- 
ment the American Spirit is endeavoring to work 
out, we shall not find fault with them, either if 
they fly to the succor of the would-be Caesar, or if 
they possess their souls in patience while among 
us and do not foolishly try to interfere with the 
full and free expression or working of the Amer- 
ican Spirit. 

If there are those among us who believe in the 
Kaiser and his " Welt Politik," let them say so. 
Let them disport themselves. Nobody objects to 
that. This is no Kaiser's Land. 1 This is the 

i The moment the present war began 79 German Socialist 
papers were suppressed, and shortly afterwards the one 
remaining Socialist paper of consequence suffered the same 
fate. 

The Kaiser is reported to have said not long ago that the 
best course for Germans to pursue who did not approve of 
his way of doing things was to leave Germany. This 
would be in line with German policy in the past. A great 
many of the Germans who came to Texas, among other 
States, were political refugees. 



192 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

People's Land. This is America. This is a free 
country, one of whose most valued assets is free- 
dom of speech ; and I go farther than most men I 
meet in Newark, or New York, or Paterson, or 
elsewhere, in my belief in that. But what mature 
Americans do object to is the everlasting and bad- 
tempered outcry by Americans in the making 
against the utterances by the American press and 
American writers and speakers of sentiments and 
convictions that it would be passing strange for an 
American of mature mind and sound heart not to 
hold. 

Let us take a hurried look abroad. Is Germany 
a real friend of the American Spirit to-day? If 
one could appeal from " Philip drunk to Philip 
sober," the question might be debatable. There 
was a Germany, not drunk with ambition or panic- 
stricken with fear, and not savage with hatred of 
those who can never be persuaded to hate, for 
which there was an increasing regard in America. 
But that Germany is now as though it were not. 
And that the dominating power in Germany that 
to-day holds the great body of the German people 
in the grasp of its mailed fist is not, and cannot 
be, the friend of the American Spirit, admits of 
no debate. These things are contrary the one 
to the other. The spirit of the German War 
Party, which now permeates and dominates the 
whole nation, is the very antithesis of the Amer- 
ican Spirit, both in its contemplated enslave- 
ment of the German people under the Hohen- 



THE AMERICAN SPIRIT 193 

zollerns, and its contemplated enslavement of 
the world under the nation on whose neck the 
heel of the Hohenzollerns rests. The present 
dominating spirit in Germany is a " throw- 
back " in civilization of more than a hundred 
years. 1 

Is England a real friend of the American 
Spirit? Now that she has learned the lesson she 
needed to be taught at the hands of her over-sea 
children, I believe with all my heart she is. We 
are about to celebrate a hundred years of peace 
between England and America. The progress in 
the cause of freedom made in England during these 
years has been immense. There is great reason 
to believe that freedom has as little to fear from 
England as from any nation. Indeed, the down- 
fall of England at this hour would be as great 
a loss as the cause of freedom could sustain. The 
integrity of England is essential to America. 
Were her integrity threatened, the tide of feeling 
among us would rise so high and run so swift and 
strong that the bark that bears our governmental 
neutrality would be swept out to sea and sunk and 
once again it would be found that blood is thicker 
than water. 

i See " Germany and the Next War," by F. von Bern- 
hardt; also article on "Treitschke" in Encyclopedia Bri- 
tannica; also articles on Germany and the Kaiser in same; 
also " Germany and England," by J. O. Cramb ; and " Pan- 
Germanism," by Roland G. Usher. See also files of N. Y. 
Times and Outlook, especially latter for Oct. 21, article 
"Germania, 1914." 



194 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

What of the future of the American Spirit? I 
believe it is safe — but not so safe that those who 
love it, and would not willingly live in a world 
from which it was banished, can afford to go to 
sleep. Eternal vigilance is the price of the things 
for which that Spirit stands. Even at home, there 
are those who as yet know little of the value of 
these precious things. Abroad, many of our dear- 
est dreams and hopes for a great family of nations 
in which Mercy and Truth shall meet together, and 
Righteousness and Peace shall kiss each other, 
and of which the Prince of Peace shall not be 
ashamed, are made light of if not set at naught. 

What is our duty ? Circumstances must decide. 
If this war should go the way the overwhelming 
majority of Americans trust it will not go, all 
that the American Spirit holds dear would be 
threatened. 

The Prince of Peace said upon a memorable oc- 
casion : " My kingdom is not of this world : if 
my kingdom were of this world, then would my 
servants fight." The Prince of Peace knows that 
the Republic of the American Spirit, out of which 
He has never been asked to depart, and in whose 
counsels His voice carries increasing weight, is of 
this world. Need I say more? 



IX 

CRUCIFIED BELGIUM 

An address delivered November 11th, 1915, be- 
fore the British and American Association, New- 
ark, New Jersey. 



IX 
CRUCIFIED BELGIUM 

" Omnium fortissimi sunt Belgae." — Julius CLesar 

The distinctive history of France begins with 
Clovis, King of the Franks. An interesting story 
has come down to us from the fifth century con- 
nected with his name. 

The story takes on additional interest just at 
this time. For Clovis was associated with cer- 
tain places that have become familiar haunts of 
our minds during the past sixteen months. He 
was also connected with certain historic events 
that are at least suggestive of history now in the 
making. Before Clovis established himself in 
Paris his capital was Tournay, Belgium. Re- 
migius, Bishop of Rheims, sometimes called Saint 
Remi, was his friend and counselor. A notable 
act of wise friendship performed by the Bishop 
for the King was the choosing of the wife who so 
greatly influenced his life. 

It is said that in a battle fought against the 

Alemanni near Cologne in the effort to drive these 

Teutonic invaders back across the Rhine, Clovis 

and his Franks were so hard pressed by the enemy 

that he appealed to the God of his Christian 

197 



198 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

wife Clotilda, promising that if victory were 
granted to his army both himself and his soldiers 
would worship Clotilda's God. The Alemanni 
were routed. True to his word, Clovis and a large 
number of his Franks were baptized by the Bishop 
of Rheims on Christmas Day, 496. 

So much for the setting of the story. The 
story is that this stalwart warrior of the early 
days, who shook off the yoke of the degenerate 
Romans, and who put the Teutons back across 
the Rhine, where they belonged, and who later de- 
feated Alaric II and his Visigoths in the battle of 
Poitiers, — slaying Alaric, it is said, with his own 
hand, — upon hearing the account of the Cruci- 
fixion the first time, cried out with fierce indigna- 
tion : " Had I and my Franks been by, we would 
have avenged the wrong, I warrant ! " 

There is another story, bearing a close resem- 
blance to this one, that has come down to us from 
the sixteenth century. It is linked with the name 
of the French soldier Crillon, styled by Henry IV 
" The Bravest of the Brave." He served at the 
siege of Calais in 1558 and in many other impor- 
tant battles. When Crillon first heard the story 
of the Crucifixion read at church he grew more 
and more excited as the reading proceeded. At 
last he burst out : " What were you about, 
Crillon, to permit such atrocity ? " 

The crime of crimes in the dark records of our 
race on this earth, the deed of perfect blackness 
that thrusts up this world high in horror and 



CRUCIFIED BELGIUM 199 

makes it notorious in sin among God's other worlds, 
is the Crucifixion. 

It is not necessary for one to be a theologian, or 
even to be much interested in theology, to have a 
deep and abiding sense of the divine light that came 
into this world through the life of the Crucified 
One; or to appreciate the fact that the Cross is 
the instrument by which, and Calvary is the place 
where, our race made its most desperate and most 
diabolical effort to extinguish the light divine that 
shines in the human heart. 

Neither Clovis nor Crillon was a theologian, nor 
was either even much interested in theology. The 
feeling of abhorrence that sprang into their hearts 
when they heard the story of the Crucifixion was 
in no sense due to their ecclesiastical training. 
They had no ecclesiastical training. They were 
field-bred, not church-bred men. Their abhor- 
rence sprang from natural unspoiled human in- 
stincts. They knew instinctively, as the world 
knows, that those who were responsible for the 
hounding and the harrying, the insulting and the 
baiting, and the deliberately planned and executed 
murder under color of law, of Jesus Christ, were 
not the friends, but the enemies, of goodness both 
human and divine, and that their action was in- 
spired from below, not from above. They knew 
instinctively that those who put the Prophet of 
Nazareth out of the way preferred darkness to 
light, and did so because their deeds and their 
motives were evil. They knew instinctively that 



200 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

it happened to Him according to the proverb: 
" He that is upright in the way is abomination to 
the wicked." 

And, indeed, that was the greatest offence of 
Jesus: That He stood upright in the way: That 
He stood right up to His full height right in the 
way, right m the gap, through which Guilty De- 
sire meant at whatever cost to reach the throat 
of its victims as quickly as possible. 

That is to say, the Founder of Christianity was 
crucified in the first century for reasons that 
would be considered sufficient in some, perhaps 
many, parts of Christendom to justify His cru- 
cifixion in the twentieth century. 

Given the Uncompromising Christ — and there 
is no other genuine Christ — it would not be diffi- 
cult to stage the Crucifixion to-day. And it would 
not be necessary to go outside of Christendom, it 
would not be even necessary to go outside the 
Christian Church, for the living characters for 
the performance, with one or possibly two notable 
exceptions. 

Strong as this statement is, it is warranted by 
the history that has been made in the past six- 
teen months, and that is even now being made. 

Only yesterday a shameful chapter of cowardly 
brutality was added. The name of Edith Cavell 
appeared at the head of it. Then there is that 
almost unreadable chapter, that almost unbeliev- 
able chapter, the Lusitania chapter, in the horrible 



CRUCIFIED BELGIUM 201 

light of which the Massacre of the Innocents sinks 
into insignificance. That chapter was not added 
yesterday ! I blush with unspeakable shame when 
I recall what ancient history this incident has be- 
come, for the record of it is written in American 
blood that an American president sold for a diplo- 
matic song and quickly forgot, and — oh the 
gnawing bitterness of it ! — succeeded in making 
most of his countrymen forget. 

I said it would not be difficult to stage the 
Crucifixion to-day. My chief reason for saying 
so is that a crucifixion on a colossal scale, the 
crucifixion of a whole people, is taking place at 
this very moment. The instigator of this black 
crime calls himself a Christian, and professes 
loudly to go about his bad business under the 
full conviction that God is with him in all his 
ways. And gathered about this crucifier there is 
an imposing array of Christian ecclesiastics who 
delight to do him honor, and place a written sanc- 
tion upon all his doings. This crucifixion differs 
in some important respects from the Crucifixion, 
but is not unworthy to be compared with it. 

It is written that the Crucified One said to two 
of His disciples upon a certain occasion : " Ye 
shall indeed drink of my cup, and be baptized 
with the baptism that I am baptized with." And 
we know that His baptism was a baptism of fire, 
and His cup a cup of blood. 

It is written that upon another occasion the 



202 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

Crucified One said to His disciples : " If any man 
will come after me, let him deny himself, and take 
up his cross, and follow me." 

It is a part of the glorious record of our race 
that individual men and women, and sometimes 
large groups of men and women, have essayed to 
drink of that Cup, and to be baptized with that 
Baptism, and to take up the Cross. And we 
have become somewhat accustomed to this noble 
action on the part of individuals, and to a less 
degree, to such action on the part of groups of 
men and women. But the world is not accustomed 
to such heroic action on the part of a whole peo- 
ple. It has remained for the twentieth century 
to witness this unique and wondrous sight. 

Of making many books on the subject of the 
European War there is no end. Already the 
proverb is applicable that one can hardly see the 
tree for the leaves. But out of these many books 
I venture to speak of one that has peculiar claims 
to the attention of the world. The author of this 
book is Dr. Charles Sarolea, a distinguished Bel- 
gian scholar, for some years head of the depart- 
ment of Romance languages in Edinburgh Uni- 
versity and Belgian consul in Edinburgh, and 
more recently war correspondent of The London 
Daily Chronicle in Belgium. 

The spirit of this little book is wonderful. The 
spirit that inspired the author of this book and 
that breathes through its pages may without ex- 



CRUCIFIED BELGIUM 203 

aggeration be likened to the spirit that inspired 
the evangelists. Indeed this book is a sort of 
evangel. It is a gospel — it brings good tidings 
to the human spirit. 

" How Belgium Saved Europe " is the name 
given to this noble little book. Nowhere in the 
volume does the author use the quotation, " He 
saved others ; himself he can not save," but no 
thoughtful person whose heart has not been hard- 
ened against Belgium by some such unholy hatred 
as the imps of Satan must have borne to the cher- 
ubim with flaming swords who were placed at the 
east of the garden of Eden to keep the way of 
the tree of life can read that beautiful, brave, and 
yet heart-breaking little book without having that 
quotation come into his mind and linger there. 

In the first chapter of this book, the caption 
of which is " The Moral Significance of the Bel- 
gian Campaign," the author says : " I must have 
made it abundantly plain that no mere motives 
of enlightened national interest or even of worldly 
honor could account for the desperate struggle 
which the Belgian people waged against Germany. 
In order to understand the dogged resistance of 
the Belgians, we must appeal to the deepest in- 
stincts of man, to the elemental impulses of lib- 
erty. And perhaps still more must we appeal 
to the higher motives of outraged justice, to the 
moral consciousness of right and wrong. Until 
we take in the fact that from the beginning the 
struggle was lifted to a higher plane, we shall 



204r PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

fail to understand the true significance of the 
war. From the beginning the war was to the Bel- 
gian people much more than a national war; it 
became a Holy War. And the expression ' Holy ' 
War must be understood not as a merely literary 
phrase, but in its literal and exact definition. The 
Belgian War was a Crusade of Civilization against 
Barbarism, of eternal right against brute force." 

" So true is this," the author goes on, " that in 
order adequately and clearly to realize the Bel- 
gian attitude, we are compelled to illustrate our 
meaning by adducing one of the most mysterious 
conceptions of our Christian religion, the notion 
of vicarious suffering. In theological language 
Belgium suffered vicariously for the sake of Eu- 
rope. She bore the brunt of the struggle. She 
was left over to the tender mercies of the invaders. 
She allowed herself to become a battlefield in 
order that France might be free from becoming 
a shambles. She had to have her beautiful capi- 
tal violated in order that the French capital might 
remain inviolate. She had to submit to vandalism 
in order that humanity elsewhere might be vindi- 
cated. She had to lose her soul " — no, not her 
soul! her " life " the author should have said — 
" in order to save the soul of Europe." 

He continues : " The general spirit in which the 
war was waged, the almost mystical temper which 
inspired the Belgian people, was strikingly illus- 
trated at the crisis of Liege. Things were looking 
desperate. It was obvious that unless relief came 



CRUCIFIED BELGIUM 205 

at once to the besieged, the fortresses could hold 
out no longer. On the other hand, it was equally 
obvious that if the relief did come Brussels would 
be saved from the indignity of German occupa- 
tion. But the French and British relief did not 
come. Yet the Belgians did not complain. They 
were not only disinterested, they were not only 
heroic, they were calmly resigned. They were in- 
deed martyrs in the Greek sense of the word. 
They were witnesses for the European cause." 

The whole of this passage that I have taken from 
Dr. Sarolea's book is apropos of my theme, but 
to me the most interesting part of the quotation 
is that in which he speaks of " Belgium suffering 
vicariously for the sake of Europe." The thought 
in the author's mind is, " She saved others ; her- 
self she can not save." He does not use the 
words, but he brings them forcibly into the sym- 
pathetic reader's mind. As one reads this Bel- 
gian's story of " How Belgium Saved Europe," 
one feels sure that he wrote with the vision of 
Crucified Belgium before his eyes, and that he was 
saying over and over again to himself in the depths 
of his heart, " They crucified her ! They cruci- 
fied her! " 

The statement in this book that Belgium suf- 
fered vicariously for the sake of Europe inter- 
ested me especially because / had often thought 
and spoken in public of Belgvwm as having been 
crucified by Germany upon the German Iron Cross 
for a reason strikingly like one of the great rea- 



206 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

sons that brought the Perfect Victim to the Cross 
nineteen centuries ago, to-wit, that little Belgium, 
under a high sense of duty, stood right up to her 
full height right in the way, right m the gap, 
through which Germany, drunk with her guilty 
dreams of world-power, meant, at whatever cost, to 
reach the throat of the first of its European victims 
as quickly as possible. 

" He that is upright in the way is abomination 
to the wicked," says the proverb. It was so in 
the year 33 a. d., when the devil-inspired cry was 
raised in Jerusalem " Away with this Man ! Cru- 
cify Him, crucify Him ! " And it was so in the 
year 1914 a. d. when the devil-inspired cry was 
raised in Berlin, " Direkt nach Paris! " 

It may be of interest to note, in passing, that 
this same thought of the vicarious suffering of 
Belgium finds expression through the pen of the 
English writer Chesterton. In a recent article on 
" Lest We Forget Belgium," he says : " This 
people we have heard of daily have endured this 
unheard-of thing, and endured it for us ... In 
this respect Belgium stands alone . . . There has 
been self-sacrifice everywhere else ; but it was self- 
sacrifice of individuals, each for his own country; 
the Servian dying for Servia, or the Italian for 
Italy. But the Belgian did not merely die for 
Belgium, Belgium died for Europe. Not only was 
the soldier sacrificed for the nation; the nation 
was sacrificed for mankind. It is a sacrifice which 



CRUCIFIED BELGIUM 207 

is, I think, quite unique among Christians ; and 
quite inconceivable among pagans." 

Before I proceed, let me say that I fully under- 
stand just how unpleasant and unwelcome to a 
world that has been so busy building greater 
barns in which to bestow its goods, and which was 
laying the flattering unction to its soul that it 
was a pretty good sort of a world, and that it 
had many goods laid up for many years, and 
which is impatient to eat and to drink and to 
be merry and to wallow in the mire of filthy lucre, 
is this thought of the vicarious suffering of Bel- 
gium that calls up before the mind's eye the awful 
vision of a Crucified Nation. I can readily under- 
stand how this awful vision is almost as unwel- 
come to the world as was the ghost of the mur- 
dered Banquo to Macbeth when it entered the 
banquet hall, glided to his place, and shook its gory 
locks at the royal murderer. 

Nevertheless the thought that gives rise to this 
awful vision has been born to perish never. It will 
not down. It can not be downed. Already it 
haunts a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thou- 
sand human minds, with a moral insistence not 
to be denied. The clever efforts of those who 
hold the reins of government in this land and 
other lands, based upon mixed motives that seem 
good to their self-regarding minds, may succeed 
for a time in drawing a thick veil between this 
awful vision and the eyes of those who though 



208 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

they may be duped by the devil when he disguises 
himself as an angel of light yet hate him with 
strong hatred once they see him face to face or 
recognize him in his works ; but this sorry sort of 
success will not last for long in a world in which, 
however often the powers of darkness may triumph 
in the skirmishes, the great battles that ultimately 
decide the contest are won for God and His Right- 
eousness. 

The mind may be diverted from this thought 
for a day, or a month, or a year, by this or that 
hush-up policy, this or that crab or crawfish or 
cuttlefish policy, this or that ostrich-like policy, 
this or that midnight-burial policy, this or that 
Pilate-like policy that foolishly looks to a little 
water to cleanse a conscience that has shirked a 
God-imposed responsibility, — by such miserable 
machinations the mind may be diverted, — but by 
a power beyond its control, or any man's control, 
the human mind will revert to the thought, and 
again and again, with ever increasing might, hu- 
mane hearts will be haunted by the awful vision of 
Crucified Belgium. 

Indeed, could the moral sense of the world be 
tolled into some cave and lulled to sleep and kept 
asleep as long as the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, 
when it awoke and left its cave it would come 
back to this awful vision with the dreadful feel- 
ing with which the debauchee with returning con- 
sciousness comes back to face the tragic facts that 
have not been changed otherwise than to become 



CRUCIFIED BELGIUM 209 

more imperious by his slumberous drunkenness. 

Henceforth the world, unless it retrogrades 
morally — unless it slumps into a moral morass 
kept dank and fetid by vapors of hell — will find 
it as impossible to escape from the vision of Cru- 
cified Belgium as the Psalmist — who cried, 
" Whither shall I go from thy spirit, or whither 
shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up 
into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in 
hell, behold, thou art there " — found it impossible 
to escape from the presence of the Lord. 

When I first ventured to speak of the cruci- 
fixion of Belgium, I took care to say that this 
crucifixion of a whole people, though not unworthy 
to be compared with the Crucifixion, differed in 
some important respects from that Perfect Crime. 
That might well go without saying, and yet it 
seems best to say it, and to make it clear just 
what I have in mind. 

In the case of the Crucifixion the perfection of 
the crime rests in some large measure upon the 
fact that the Crucified One was a Perfect Victim. 
Quite apart from His claims to the highest possible 
relationship with God, it is the moral judgment of 
mankind that in the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ 
the powers of darkness laid violent hands upon 
and did to death a Perfect Victim. 

I do not myself think Jesus Christ was crucified 
because He was perfect. As I have said, I think 
He was crucified because He stood up to His full 
height m the way, in the gap, against the powers 



210 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

of darkness and absolutely refused to budge an 
inch or a hair's breadth. It is my profound con- 
viction that He was put out of the way for the 
simple reason that He was in the way of the forces 
of miquity. 

Jesus Christ was put out of the way because 
He stood four-square against the forces of iniquity 
— sixty seconds a minute, sixty minutes an hour, 
twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, fifty- 
two weeks a year. Other reasons there may have 
been, but that was the predominating reason. The 
motives that moved men nineteen hundred years 
ago are, in the main, the motives that move men 
to-day. 

Now, in the case of the crucifixion of Belgium 
the victim is not a perfect victim. That ought 
to go without saying. No one would for a mo- 
ment think of making the claim of perfectness for 
a whole people — the Belgian or any other — that 
one is ready to make for the Crucified One. Cer- 
tainly Belgium makes no such claim for herself; 
and no Belgian thinks of making such a claim; 
nor does any friend of Belgium. That Belgium 
has sinned, as other nations have sinned, Belgium 
knows and, through the lips of some of her noblest 
sons, freely confesses. Cardinal Mercier has wit- 
nessed to the truth, not only about his people, but 
to his people. His tongue is a two-edged sword, 
Perhaps never did her sins stand out more clearly 
before her eyes, or the burden of them seem more 
intolerable than now. 



CRUCIFIED BELGIUM £11 

But in that the Belgium people have sinned, 
and sinned grievously, they have not shown them- 
selves different or removed themselves far from 
other people. Rather have they thereby shown 
themselves like and drawn themselves near the 
other peoples of the earth. 

America can match sins with Belgium any day. 

There is no Belgian red that can not be matched 
with an American red. 

There is no Belgian black that can not be 
matched with an American black. 

And what is true of America is equally true of 
the other nations of Christendom. 

There are those who are tempted to judge na- 
tions solely by their lowest types and their lowest 
moods. But that will not do. So judged every 
nation would, when weighed in the balances, be 
found wanting and worthy of condign punish- 
ment. 

The highest types and the highest moods of a 
nation must also be taken into account and given 
very large consideration. 

If this is done in the case of Belgium — if due 
weight is given to the life of her heroic King and 
to the lives of those valiant men who have served 
under him, and to the Belgian mood of mind and 
heart these past sixteen gruelling months, more 
especially that of her great-hearted Cardinal — I 
know of no nation, my own or any other, that 
ranks higher to-day. 

Indeed, at this moment of history — smothered 



212 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

by smooth words as has been the spirit that once 
made us great — America is not worthy to un- 
loose the latchet of Belgium's ragged, blood- 
soaked shoe! 

But, let me say again, I have had no thought 
of even suggesting that in the case of the cruci- 
fixion of Belgium the powers of darkness found a 
perfect victim. So far as the fact of her cruci- 
fixion goes, given the heroic mood of mind and 
heart in which Germany found Belgium August a 
year ago when, flinging her own honor to the four 
winds, she demanded of her little neighbor that she 
make abject surrender of her birthright as a na- 
tion of honor — given this — Belgium's state of 
grace had nothing to do with the case. No degree 
of national perfection could have saved her from 
crucifixion. 

Was it not, indeed, just because Belgium met 
the dishonorable demand suddenly made upon her 
with a look that bore marked resemblance to the 
look that came into the eyes of Jesus when He set 
His face to go to Jerusalem that the furnace of 
affliction was heated for her seven times more than 
the god of War is wont to heat it? 

Perfection could only have heightened her glory 
upon the cross to which she was nailed by fiendish 
hands. 

Great as that glory is — and it is very, very 
great ; for much of her dross has been refined into 
pure gold in the fire of pain ; and much of her 
sin has been washed away in heroic blood ; — that 



CRUCIFIED BELGIUM 213 

it might have been greater the greater souls in 
Belgium know full well. And in this heavy hour 
in which Belgium hangs upon the cross, their su- 
preme regret is, " It might have been ! " 

Time forbids the recital of the details of the 
insolent demand made by her big and brutal neigh- 
bor upon Belgium to get out of the way in which 
Almighty God had placed her for just such an 
hour as struck Sunday night, August 2nd, 1914; 
or the noble answer Belgium gave, first by word 
of mouth, and then by the blood of her sons poured 
out like water. 

But surely it is not necessary to narrate Bel- 
gium's history since that bloody Sunday night. 
The world knows it by heart. Americans of the 
better sort know it better far than the ignoble 
history made by their own country during this 
period of unprecedented presidential hysteria. 
And the world knows that no nation ever made 
so much noble history in so short a time as Bel- 
gium has done. 

The names of Liege, of Albert, of Mercier, are 
henceforth synonyms of unselfish heroism in the 
highest. 

The world knows the incalculable debt France 
owes, and Great Britain owes, to Belgium. 

And the better part of the world knows — in- 
deed all the world except that poor part of it 
that dwells in the thick darkness where might 
seems to make right, and where magnificence in 
sin seems to set the seal of approval upon sin — 



214 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

knows that Belgium not only saved France, and 
saved Great Britain, but that Belgium saved 
Europe ! 

And if Belgium saved Europe, then Belgium 
saved America and the world! 

Today, no doubt, the world sees this truth as 
it were in a glass darkly. But the day is not 
far distant when the world will know this truth 
as truth is known when it is seen face to face by 
gentlemen unafraid. Then the heart of the world 
will be pierced through and through as with a 
sword. And out of the heart of the world which 
will then know to the full its own bitterness as it 
realized the meaning of Belgium's self-sacrifice 
will come the agonizing cry, " She saved others ; 
herself she could not save ! " 

" Without their aid," wrote Sir Oliver Lodge 
in his tribute to the Belgians, " the face of Europe 
would have been changed past redemption, and 
the Earth might have been subject to a brutal 
and intolerable dominance." 

There is no room to doubt it. 

A Prussianized world would be a lost world. 

Prussian Kultur means Human Perdition. 

A Kaiserized world would be an accursed world. 

A Hohenzollernized world would be a political 
hell on earth — save to those, perhaps, who are 
content " to fiddle and be slaves," as the German 
historian Gervinus said was the case with his 
people in their attitude towards their own rulers, 
and, I add, to the professional pacifist. In such 



CRUCIFIED BELGIUM 215 

a world every true liberty-loving soul would pant 
even for Hell as the hart panteth for the water- 
brook. And the Devil, seeing the diabolical glory 
of his ancient throne grow dim, would abandon it 
in disgust to become a goose-stepping doorkeeper 
of hell-scuttling Potsdam. 

Yes, in a real sense, Belgium is the savior-nation 
of the modern world. 

Before closing, let me recall to your minds what 
it was Clovis and Crillon said when they first heard 
the story of the Crucifixion. " Had I and my 
Franks been by," cried Clovis, " we would have 
avenged the wrong, I warrant." And the French 
soldier, forgetting for the moment the gulf of 
time that lay between himself and the Crucifixion, 
cried out, " What were you about, Crillon, to 
permit such atrocity? " 

One sometimes wonders what he would have done 
had he been in Jerusalem the day — Der Tag — 
the powers of darkness did their desperate worst 
to make an end of the Uncompromising Christ. It 
would indeed be surpassingly interesting to know 
just where one would have stood that day. And 
it would also be of great interest to know what at- 
titude one's own nation, as represented by those 
who were in a position to speak and act for it, 
would have taken towards the crucifiers. 

Well, perhaps the events of the past sixteen 
months have done more to throw light upon that 
ethical question than all that has happened since 
the crowning shame of the human race was un- 



216 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

covered to the view of God and His other worlds 
on the hill-top called Calvary. 

In our own time another crucifixion, on a colos- 
sal scale, the details of which are more horrible 
and more shameful to humanity than those that 
accompanied the Crucifixion of the Perfect Vic- 
tim, has taken place. The predominant reason 
for this twentieth century crucifixion is the same, 
mutatis mutandis, as the reason for the Crucifixion 
of the first century. The victim was in the way 
of the crucifiers. The victim, under an overwhelm- 
ing sense of duty to God and mankind, stood glo- 
riously in the gap against Guilty Desire. 

This twentieth century crucifixion did not take 
place in a corner. It took place before the 
amazed eyes of the whole dazed world. And what 
is more, it has been brought home to the doors of 
every nation in Christendom, in a manner more 
delicate than that adopted by the Levite whose 
concubine was violated and murdered in the days 
of the Judges of Israel, but in a manner not less 
difficult to ignore, and accompanied by a like in- 
vitation to " consider of it, take advice, and speak 
your minds." 

Throughout the world men and nations have 
considered this matter, this infamous matter, this 
crime, this bloody, brutal worse than barbaric 
crime, have taken advice, and have spoken their 
minds, either by word or deed. Most of us know 
where we stand. And we know where the nations 
of the earth stand, and how they stand. 



CRUCIFIED BELGIUM 217 

To me — I speak it out of an aching heart that 
has beaten in utter loyalty for well-nigh half a 
century — it is a burning and humiliating and 
will be an everlasting shame, that, brought face 
to face with the moral crisis produced by this de- 
liberately planned national crucifixion, my Coun- 
try, in her official capacity, failed miserably to 
meet it. She became hysterical. She stammered 
and stuttered and talked foolishly, childishly, baby- 
ishly. The Spirit of America was stampeded. 
Whether or not America dared, America did not 
speak her mind ! Nor has she spoken it yet ! 

Privately — by night as it were — individual 
Americans have done some things that have been 
called generous by generous-minded souls across 
the Atlantic. And these private deeds have been 
a feeble expression of a sympathy with Belgium 
that a real American naturally feels deep down 
in his heart and finds it difficult to suppress. But 
I find it impossible to draw consolation, much less 
take pride, in these little deeds of personal kind- 
ness. Indeed, in the face of our awful national 
failure, our Great American Refusal, I am almost 
ashamed to speak of that which called for charity 
only and left courage out of account. 

One of Raemaekers' cartoons represents a 
sleek, pot-bellied man of the bourgeois type, well 
satisfied with himself, and therefore respectable, 
dressed in the height of fashion, cane in hand, his 
eyes directed upwards as if he were expecting 
bounties from heaven. Behind this person, who 



218 PATRIOTISM AND RADICALISM 

is Mynheer Pieterse, is to be seen an Apache, hold- 
ing in his hand a knife that drips with blood — the 
blood of a woman lying murdered and denuded 
on the street. Under this bloody satire one may 
read the thoughts of Mynheer Pieterse, as inter- 
preted by the artist : " The fellow has only 
robbed and murdered his neighbor. Shall I call 
him a bandit ? No — I'll greet him politely. 

That's more neutral." 

■ ••■••• 

" And when He was come near, He beheld the 
city, and wept over it, saying, If thou hadst known, 
even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which 
belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from 
thine eyes." 



